THE 

RELIGION OF SCIENCE; 

OR 

THE ART 

OF 

ACTUALIZING LIBERTY, 

AND OF 

PERFECTING 

AND 

SATISFACTORILY PROLONGING 

HAPPINESS : 

BEING A 

PRACTICAL ANSWER 



TO THE 



GREAT QUESTION,- '^' 



" If tou take away jit Religion, what wili. 
you give me in its stead ?" 

NEW YORK : 
CALVIN BLANCHARD, 76 NASSAU STREET, 



*"*^*'^ 



Entered, according to Act of CoDgress, in the year One Thousand 
Eight Hundred and Sixty, by CALYIN BLANCHARD, in the Clerk's 
Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern Dis- 
trict of New York. 




/ 

GENERAL DIVISION OF THE WORK. 

I. 
PROPOSITIOIV AL. . 

Page 5 to 9. 

c3~ 



II. 
PREPARATORY. 

Page 10 to ll 



III. 
IIVTRODUCTORY. 

Page 18 to 28. 



IV. 
Fri¥DAMEI¥TAL & ARCJUMENTATITE. 

Page 29 to 136. 



V. 
IL.L.USTRATIVE. 

Page 137 to 172. 



VI. 
DEMONSTRATIVE. 

Page 173 to 187. 



PROPOSITIOI¥ALi. 



I. 



The Religion of Science alone, can be the antidote 
to 'the Religion of Mystery, and to the arbitrary rule, 
unjust law, impracticable morality, and suicidal virtue 
founded thereon. 

Religion to be true, to he Religion, must be 2i present^ 
living^ dynamical^ intelligible^ actuality ; not a by -gone 
speculative abstraction, or moral fossil — a spectre of the 
past, beckoning man backwards, encouraging a rejection 
of the new for the old, and mysteriously pointing at life, 
through the dark portals of death. 

The Religion of Science will be the constantly higher 
and higher law which knowledge, when harmoniously 
connected, when organized into a living body of doc- 
trine, as it demonstrably must soon be, will ever clearer 
and more efficiently reveal and develop, up to the per- 
fection point. 

n. 

The Government of Science will be the regulation of 
voluntary action according to the Religion of Science ; 
the direction of progress in consonance with order ; the 
aider instead of the represser of desirable human action ; 
and finally, the liberator of voluntary action from all 
obstacles — from all the hindrances which the discord- 
ancy of its own action, and the discordancy of the action 
of nature other than human, now oppose. 

The Government of Science will find out nature's 
laws, and facilitate, to the utmost possible, their opera- 



t) THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

tion ; thus eliminating Despotism, which wholly consists^ 
in ignorantly making laws for nature to go by. 

The Government of Science must, therefore, be the- 
only possible free Government — the sole remedy for 
monarchical, aristocratical, and majority despotism^ 
and for all quackery and imposture. 

III. 

Scientifically and harmoniously organized, and scien- 
tifically regulated and directed collective man. and all 
nature or existence in the connection developed to the 
utmost, alone can fully actualize perfect liberty, good- 
ness, and happiness. 

IV. 

Government is naturally the practice, to which the 
current religion furnishes the theory. Religion and gov- 
ernment mutually expound each other, equally whether 
they profess to do so or not. Therefore, the State must 
inevitably be in either open or clandestine union with 
the inevitably co-existing church ; the true church is in- 
dispensibly requisite to a free state — nay, as soon as the 
first exists, the latter must inevitably co-exist, and where- 
ever a people are restricted^ either by monarchical, aris- 
tocratical, or majority force, the social theory — ^^the Re- 
ligion — is lame, incompetent,/aZ5^. 

Despotism and false, alias ''mysterious" religion are 
inseparable ; and the assumption that there is no union 
of church and state in the United States, is an impudent 
falsehood, a treacherous snare, and a most mischievous 
delusion. 



Until wisdom and knowledge have, through the har- 
monious reorganization of the body politic, \\\^ faith and 
sustaining influenco of the majority, popular govern- 
ment can but re-enact whatever follies, blunders and 
tyrannies absolutism may have instituted ; and, (as dis- 



PROPOSITIONAL. 7 

order is the fundamental law of evil,) in a manner as 
much more mischievous as it is unavoidably more con 
^used ; and demagogisra and majority domination must 
continue to settle hack again to the monarchism from 
whence they periodically foam^ till Science conquers 
'Sociology. Until collective man is as perfectly organiz- 
ed as is, or rather will be, ijidividual man, free govern- 
ment will be an impossibily ; and until collective man 
commences to be so organized, individual man can no 
more commence to be free, than a clock can commence 
to run whilst every wheel and spring of it is out of har- 
mony with every other. 

VI. 

The only effectual step even towards reforming or 
improving man, individually or collectively ; towards 
making him better, happier, or more free; must be, to 
prevent him^ from the cradle^ from being miseducated; 
to indoctrinate him, as soon as he is capable of being 
taught, m the principles of the Religion which Science^ 
as a whole^ reveals. Man's first educationally stamped 
impressions, form the citadel which insures to those who 
-command it, the empire of the world. Kot Emperors, 
Kings, or Presidents, bnt the authors of man's cradle 
hymns and nursery tales are, and ever have been man's 
most injhjieniial rulers and law-givers ; and ever must, 
and ever should be such. 

VII. 

Free discussion can, at most, but partially extract 
the poison of false education from the minds of a few 
peculiarly gifted individuals ; all the good of doing 
which, inevitably becomes neutralized by the many, 
whose weaker, or at least differently constituted intel- 
lectual organs have been so effectually maimed, that 
they cannot, as experience has fully shown, be thus 
influenced. 



8 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

YIII. 

The ballot-box, inexorably true to its lower law nature^ 
has unswervingly resisted the oft repeated attempts of 
both good intentionism and moral alchemy ; stubbornly 
refusing to be either coaxed or transmuted into anything 
but that modern Pandora's box — political quackery's 
medicine-chest. The elective franchise is the oppression- 
ometer which tells how high the power of the majority 
rises ; and, consequently, to what degree they whom the 
majority back, may safely tyranize over the minority. 

The logic of elective government is, that the ma- 
jority — the strongest — has a right to tyranize, to the 
full extent of their power, over the minority — the weak- 
est ; that " to the victors belong the spoils." The only 
general consolation being, that everybody is at liberty to 
avail himself of every artifice, fraud, or force which he 
and his fellow conspirators can employ^ in order to 
oppress instead of being oppresssed — to have the 
''legal" privilege to plunder, instead of being "legally'^ 
plundered. 

IX. 

Free Government can be nothing less than the Art 
of Arts, to which True Eeligion must be its correspond- 
ing Science of Sciences ; and they who preach liberty 
from any other stand-point, are either circumscribed, 
weak, deluded, or so abominably corrupt, and so blind to 
real self-interest, as to mean spoils. 

X. 

" Supernaturalism," is, unconsciously, the quintescence 
of sensualness ; it is, when stripped of its sophistical ver- 
biage, a distance-dimmed and incoherent view of, and an 
uncritical impatience for, iho^Q final creations of the sub- 
stantial — perfect liberty, perfect goodness, and perfect 
and satisfactorily-lasting or " eternal" happiness, which 
will — 

Constitute the completion of Development ; 



PROPosmoNAL. y 

Be to the Highest Conceivable, its Corresponding 
Possible ; 

Demonstrate that Omnipotency is not in a mere sub- 
jective abstraction, but in the Sensibly Existent ; 

Eliminate '' Immateriality ;" 

Transform Earth to Heaven ; 

Be the fullfilling of Man, and thus, his reconciliation 
with Perceptibility ; 

Base the Subjective on the Objective, and, in short, 

Manifest Nature's Sufficiency. 



PREPARATORY. 



In my Title-page and Prepositional, I have striven 
most indnetrionsly to give some idea of the drift of my 
^ork. This, every author ought to do ; particularly if 
his writings have a 6?6>772^r^A^n5^'y^ meaning, or involve 
general principles : in order neither to inconvenience and 
uselessly disturb that vast number of readers who eschew 
meaning which requires unusual mental exertion to under- 
stand, nor annoy those with " established principles'^ 
which, " right or wrong," are "felt to be true," and, of 
course '^ safe." Surely, the liberty to think as we please, 
(if we can do so,) as we are taught, or, even, not to think 
at all where we are incapable, equally with the right to 
think as we must, or as, from the best information obtain- 
able, we can, is entitled to protection from guile, violence, 
or even carelessness. 

If people were honestly apprised of the drift of 
books, sermons, discourses, orations, and plays, few 
would be betrayed into a mere smattering of what they 
are so incapable of comprehending distinctly, that they 
flounder about therein as ridiculously as an incapable 
swimmer roils up, spatters about, and chokes, or per- 
haps drowns himself and others in water deeper than 
that into which he should have ventured or been deluded. 

It is, therefore, deejDly to be regreted that, as a 
general rule, we might as well attempt to calculate the 
tonnage of ships from their names, as to try to find out 
anything respecting the meaning^ of bocks from their 
titles ; worse still, it is the sole object of most books, and 
of most public teaching, preaching, and intellectual 
amusement, bj^ decorating prejudices in the most attract- 
ive colors, to make the masses who entertain them, pay 



PREPARATORY. 11 

tor flattery in the guise of instruction. Of course, neither 
readers nor hearers are ever apprized of all this. 

The short title — The Eeligion of Science — would 
have been sufficiently significant to the very few who 
might have caught its import; but it would have led 
many into the supposition that this was but another of 
those ridiculous attempts to reconcile the fragmentary 
knowledge which so absurdly passes for science, with the 
Protestantish contradictions which exhibit " supernatur- 
al" Catholicity's decay ; and which with corresponding 
absurdity, are accepted for Se-ligion. 

The original interpreters of original revelation^ in- 
spired by egotism, guided by feeling, and pressed by in- 
stant necessity for a decision, based the universe itself 
on mere subjectivity; pending the orthodoxy of that 
decision, religion, law, and morality, (of course poised on 
the s£ime point no point) have been but mere impracti- 
cabilities and vain abstractions ; and government, from 
the domination of one^ to that of the majority^ has been 
as despotic and monarchical as the entire lack of science 
therein could make it. 

But I (not through any superiority of which I feel 
in the slightest degree boastful, but in consequence of 
inheriting an organism which under favoring circum- 
stances, has . enabled me to seize the meaning of 
nineteenth century revelation, notwithstanding its con- 
fusion and incoherency) have demonstrated, within the 
compass of these few pages, how to reverse the present 
bottom upwards, wrong end foremost, mutually condem- 
natory state of things. I have given an outline of a re- 
ligious, governmental, and social system whose basis will 
be the knowable ; and which is to displace that mockery 
of system which is based on that synonym for ignorance 
— mystery / on that original bold assumption of utter 
inexperience, now so monstrously incompatible ; and to 
attempt to systematize which, millions of volumes, " re- 
ligious," 'Megal," and '' moral," have been, of course, 
vainly written, and enough to make millions of millions 
more, as vainly spoken. Oh, how much paper, ink. 



12 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

leather, gilding — in short, time and Idbor^ have been 
wasted in disgracing books? Oh, how man has been 
imposed upon — bewildered — "stuffed" — by words with- 
out meaning; by articulate sounds^ devoid of either 
sense or music. 

They who have hitherto advanced new views on sub- 
jects in which all are vitally interested, have thereby 
incurred a hatred too indelible for anything short of the 
adoption of, and long habituation to, those views, to 
eradicate ;. for men continue, often for generations, to 
hate those on whose account they have committed the 
folly of hating unjustly. Besides, there is nothing so 
provoking as the barren discovery that we have been 
befooled ; and men will forgive, nay, even cherish, the 
very authors of their humiliation, provided that that 
humiliation has been so general as to be respectable, 
sooner than they will look complacently on those who 
made them sensible of it without showing them how to 
escape it. 

But Pantheism, the half-way station between "super- 
naturalism" and the Religion of Science, is now, though 
generally under the name of " Christianity," or " the 
prevailing religion," all but universal in the scientific 
world ; and even in many of the most fashionable 
" Christian churches" the masses sleep as quietly under 
that doctrine, but thinly disguised, as they used to under 
preaching the most orthodox. 

And inasmuch, as I am amply furnished with the 
new and efficient with which to supercede the old and 
effete, and instead of warring on the interests of any, 
am going to demonstrate how those of all may be im- 
measurably benefited, I have no fears of experiencing 
the unhappy fate of my predecessors, who, under less 
auspicious circumstances, could not be thus fortified ; and 
vet, the more honor to them, stood unflinchingly in the 
cause of the human race, braving crucifixion, the stake, 
the rack, the dungeon, and the spite and malice of those 
to whose redemption they were devoting themselves. 

Religion, from its incipiency to its full development, 



PREPARATORY. 13 

is naturally man's highest law. Its evolution is divisible 
into three stages — the mystical, the opinionistic, and the 
demonstrable. Religion, we must not forget, was never 
so completely mysterious as to be wholly unscientific ; 
had it been so, it would have been veritably '' super- 
natural." 

Leaders of Mankind — You shall no longer be blind 
with respect to the suicidal nature of the policy your 
narrow selfishness prompts you to adopt. Those of you 
who are gifted with even a moderate degree of discern- 
ment have always been aware that your positions, like 
those of the " upper classes'' of mankind throughout, 
avail you little or nothing in the way of happiness ; you 
simply did not see why ; you did not know, as you now 
shall, that there is an ample alternative between the un- 
varnished wretchedness and the gilded misery which 
have hitherto constituted the two horns of man's delimma^ 
Tou shall herein discover how to procure for yourselves, 
and by so doing for the masses whom you direct, the 
perfect and satisfactorily-lasting happiness of which you, 
in common with all mankind, have hitherto but faintly 
dreamed — in which you have merely believed. 

Ye who, with a zeal worthy to be coupled with the 
highest knowledge, would impose on jnankind individu- 
ally, in addition to the specialties to which they have to 
attend, the mastery of the universal Science of Sciences 
and Art of Arts of their own perfection; and, (as moral 
evil is but the consequence of physical evil) of the per- 
fection or full development of all else in the connection ; 
— You are now the chief stumbling-blocks in the way of 
progress. How can you not see that great, general, all 
comprehensive news, and the practical application of 
all Science are so utterly beyond the capabilities of the 
many, that 'tis incalculably easier to palm off on them 
a uselessly old religion, (and a system of government, 
law, or morals to correspond) than to wheedle them into 
purchasing even a second-hand coat — to swindle them 
out of the value of their heads, than to cheat them out of 
the price of their hats. That although they would not 



14 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

tolerate a fashion not '' the very latest" in their clothes, 
the very oldest fashion — a fashion as old as human na- 
ture ; and as uncouth as primitive savageism could in- 
vent — is good enough in their estimation, for their most 
important theories — for even their religious opinions. 
Nay, they actually value such theories or opinions, in 
consequence of the oldness of their fashion, and do not 
discern their entire inapplicability to human affairs in 
this age. 

If a particularly accommodating pedler offers to sell 
a hat to one of " the people," whom you consider their 
own best judges of religion, and competent to fathom 
that deepest and most complicated matter — Sociology ; 
if that hat fits his head, and, like " supernatural" religion, 
" feels true," he will look all the more sharply, ere he 
pays for it, to see that it is not his own hat^ which has 
been stolen and ironed over. But when the adroit 
thieves and smooth tongued peddlers of opinion on a 
matter (religion) as complicated as man's salvation, lov- 
ingly offer to sell to him their mystical merchandise — 
their " supernatural " furnishing for the head, although 
every tatter of it fit human nature as naturally as an 
old hat, {so old, even, that its value has wholly depart- 
ed,) fits its old head, and has, therefore, a perfectly na- 
tural appearance, he never suspects that it has been 
stolen from his own human nature, even when that 
nature was savagelj^ natural ; but readily buys the old 
trumpery for supernatural^ and at an all but superna- 
tural price ; blind to its completely worn out condition^ 
or easily persuaded to value it all the more highly on 
that account ; and stone blind to the glaring fact that it is 
stolen merchandise—originally stolen from his earliest 
progenitors, polished over with mystery, palmed back 
on them for " supernatural," and has been thus success- 
ively stolen, polished, and palmed off, ever since, by the 
predecessors of the pedling thieves and swindlers who 
now offer it to him, and who have the effrontry to de- 
mand a price for it, increased in the ratio of its 
delapidation. 



PEEPARATORY, 1& 

But there is a point where falsehood, spite of the 
silly ingenuity of knavery and the combined force of 
folly, must caluminate ; and " supernatural" religion 
and its corresponding governmental, social, and moral 
despotism have reached that point in decay where even 
the putty of virtue is utterly inadequate to their por- 
ousness ; and where both Protestant and Elective-fran- 
chive varnish daub instead of polishing. 

Victims of treacherous or blind leaders — " Masses'^ 
— " the People ;" — My respect for opinions really yours^ 
— your special opinions — your opinions on things of such 
immediate importance that life itself depends on them, 
and my friendship for you are such, that I frankly tell 
you, that with respect to the general opinions which you 
simply " entertain," without knowing any more about 
them than an uninquisitive host does about the business 
of his lodgers, I utterly dispise them ; have altogether 
repudiated them ; and you cannot too quickly do the 
same. Not that they were not worth something — nay, 
as good as circumstances would permit, originally y but 
they have been handed down from remote and savage 
ages, and hawked about by peddling thieves, till they 
are completely worn out ; besides, they are as inap- 
plicable to the intelligence of the nineteenth century, 
as bark canoes are to its commerce — as out of place as 
Comanches or Esquimaux would be* in a printing oflBce 
or steam-engine manufactory — as inefficient as bows 
and arrows would be in an attack on Sebastopol. Still 
as anything is better than nothing^ you have acted wise- 
ly in clinging to the old balderdash till the Religion of 
Science was, as it herein is, revealed. For the provis- 
ional wooden arch cannot, without fatal consequences, be 
demolished, till the permanent stone one is in a condi- 
tion to superceed it. 

Mankind — So long as your most important princi- 
ples exist only in words or on paper ; and are, from age, 
too decripid for use, and fit but to be talked about, 
faught about, quarrelled about, hawked about, or prayed, 
sermonized, and sung over one day in seven : so long 



16 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

as joviV practical ethics, throughout, are so savage that 
success sanctifies crime, and misfortune principally 
works vice ; covrardice may applaud, and crime may 
flatter, but the honest and thoroughly scientific, whilst 
they love and pittv you^ must despise the rickety old no- 
tions you now unnecessarily cling to and call faith, the 
stale old fogyisms you dignify by the name of opinion, 
the wretched, superanuated, inventions you call law, the 
refined cruelty you call virtue and morality ; and must 
most cordially hate the abominable compound of rascal- 
ity, treachery, and brutality which you mutually infiict 
and submit to, under the name of government. 

I have shown how man may be governed by the 
highest wisdom and capability, instead of by the lowest, 
or even middle rate folly and the vilest quackery; by 
those with the science of human and all other nature for 
their aid, and whose selfishness will be so enlightened 
that the periphery of its radius will include and benefit 
all sentient beings, instead of by those whose selfishness 
is so contracted and narrow that it squeezes its owners 
out of all comfort, has no radiation, and converts human 
beings into moral darknesses, clashing antagonistically 
and miserably with each other. 

Civilized man has hitherto been governed by perma- 
nent bands of gorged brigands, sustained by a sordid 
"supernaturalistically" ferocious soldiery, or by success- 
ive gangs of hungry furies, backed by the "supernatur- 
ally" blind prejudice and overwhelming force of the 
lowest and most brutal of mankind. 

But an ample alternative is herein elaborated. Com- 
plete liberty and perfect and satisfactorily-lasting happi- 
ness are within the province of AET ; the preliminaries 
of the corresponding SCIENCE to which, will herein 
be found fully explained ; and the guarantee that this 
all-sufficient Science and Art will be used instead of 
abused by its high professors, will consists not in their 
" virtue," not in their " honesty," not in their " sense of 
duty," but in their enlightened selfishness — in the full 
knowledge that their own perfect and satisfactorily- 



PREPARATOBY. 71 

lasting happiness can be secured only in connection with 
that of all. 

Leaders of Mankind ! whether such by right of birth, 
usurpation, majority force, or right divine ; you shall 
at length fully understand your real interests. I ask 
nothing of you on the strength of what you ought to do. 
I defy you to pursue your absurdly short-sighted, " penny- 
wise, pound-foolish," equally murderous and suicidal 
schemes much longer. 



Ii\TROI>UCTORY. 



Nature does not possess the power to be inert. Were- 
all existence reduced to its elements — or attenuated to a 
condition the thinest and weakest conceivable — it would 
of itself, thence proceed, not only to its present condition, 
but to the perfect one, the outlines of w^hich we shall 
present. 

Creation is that adaptation, through development, of 
supply to demand, which, in the very nature of All 
Existence of which we can conceive, cannot stop short of 
completion. Absolute creation, whether of matter, phe- 
nomena, or mere space and duration, is unintelligible. 

Neither the earth, nor man, are yet created. Mater* 
ial constituents are still so far from being adjusted to their 
best capacity, that much of the surface of our globe is 
continually frozen ; a greater portion perpetually scorch- 
ed, and the remainder is but barely tolerable. Earth- 
quakes and volcanoes do still fearfully devastate, and 
tempests destroy, except when gathering fury. Pesti- 
lence has not been banished, nor famine prevented. In 
short, developement is yet only preliminary ; supply, ex- 
cept very partially, being still dormant or latent, and 
demand, consequentlj^, being in dreadful excess. 

Human nature, like its progenitor, is also at appar- 
ent war with itself. Man is a bundle of ill defined 
wants, quarrelling fearfully with his ignorance for satis- 
faction, and wrong and outrage ^^^mtobe inconquerably 
triumphant. 

But let us give tongues to the passions, their opposers, 
their would-be pacifiers, and their will-be satisfier : 

Keason. \To the Passions^ Blind and insensate 
furies, whose appetites feeding does but augment, what 
will content ye ? 



INTRODUOTORY. 



19 



The Passions. That alone, which, to desire, though 
Bver so insatiably, yet does pledge the power which 
made us to bestow, or model us to its capacity to give, 
or forfeit all claim to be considered just, or wise, or ought 
l)ut malevolence or impotency. 

That power, whom you call nature, and extol a8 
highest, as yet has made us but a half, intensely furious 
for our complement. We would have satisfaction. Feed- 
ing ? Poor scrimp ! Can you judge our capacities, and 
what should fill them ? We are not so insensate as ta 
be wheedled into compromise. We will have all, or 
vengeance. We are not half so blind as our enemies 
— fools, whom even the dearest experience fails to teach 
— are lame. Since our existence we have been opposed, 
and thereby actually strengthened, instead of being con- 
quered ; whilst cowardly retreat, or worse disaster, has 
befell our foes. Still, they persist, and blindly think us 
blind. 

Virtue. [7b Reason^ Confer not with the Passions ; 
His most dangerous. They listen not to persuasion. Com- 
promise (so pure, so select, and holy is my nature) would 
80 defile me, as entire surrender. Suspicion's breath 
would soil my purity. Suspicion must not even look on me- 

Science. Could all passion be sated, all m^ust be 
well. Howe's the question : and that, I alone can answer* 
The Passions unopposed, what harm would come, which 
waring with them does not now produce? The Passions 
conquered, nature would be dead. 'Till all be had, which 
nature prompts to ask, nature will stand a failure so 
■apparent, that the real will be scorned for the unreal, 
folly be rampant, ignorance supreme, religion be a fraud, 
law a hoax, government despotism, and man a victim — 
a greater or a lesser dupe. 

Old Fogyism. What! let the Passions run riot? 
As though they did not cause misery enough now, in 
spite of all our efforts to keep them in subjection. It is 
impossible to satisfy the Passions. Anarchy would result 
from the attempt. They must be repressed. Constraint 
— force — law — both statutory and moral — are the only 
jpractioal measv/res. 



20 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCB. 

SuPERNATURALisM. \_To the Passwus?^ Continue to 
repose your faith in me, and I will give you, in the 
world to come^ more satisfaction than you yet can ask ; 
bliss too extatic to be nov) conceived. 

Demagogism. And I vrill, for man's suffrages^ be 
his humble servant in helping the majority to all the 
liberty which freedom of opinion can bestow. What 
more can be reasonably expected ? Hasn't the majority 
a right to rule ? Hurrah ! 

Reason. Believe not Supernaturalism's promises. 
When stripped of their deceitful verbiage, they amount 
but to engagements to satisfy desire after it has ceased. 
Learn to be content with nature's laws, as they have 
stood revealed, for countless ages. 

The Passions. Eeason, thou idiot. Can we be con- 
tent with discontent ? Or satisfied with dissatisfaction ? 
Demagogism, you have sorely disappointed us thus far^ 
but we are full of hope. Supernaturalism, we half 
mistrust you ; but 'till nature does fulfil her engagements 
with us, we will with you, cry shame upon her. 

Science. Eeason, 'tis evident you can give man no- 
thing ; nay, you do but strive to reconcile him to what 
he now endures from lacking almost everything ; you 
are utterly ineflScient as a leader; and when the age 
of reason, that transition period, now culminating, 
which intervenes between the age of credulity and the 
age of certainty — the age of ought to and the age of hovr 
to- — is passed, you will subside into your proper, very 
useful, but quite subordinate position. 

If supernaturalism is ridiculously extravagant, you 
are absurdly parsimonious ; if she is extremely wild^ 
you are excessively tame. In short, you are too cauti- 
ous to venture beyond what you so jprecisely know, that 
you understand only as much even about me, as one 
not a master builder, could comprehend of the must 
splendid possible edifice, from seeing its unjoined part& 
in detail. 

Of course, you are too short sighted to see that 
Bupernaturalism at bottom, is, though unconsciously, the 



INTRODUCTORY. 



21 



very kernel of naturalism ; the husks of which, you are 
ignorant how to strip off: that, in the language of Hum- 
bolt, "in the early ages of mankind there manifests it- 
self in the simple intuition of natural facts, and in the 
efforts made to comprehend them, the germ of the philo- 
sophy of nature." 

Man, even in his incipiency, instinctively, though 
unconsciously, constituted himself nature's God ; and 
instinct is, at bottom, always true. And when collective 
man^ is organized or developed, all nature in the con- 
nection will actually have an intelligence whose modi- 
fying or creative power will be similar to that which the 
body of an individual possesses in a will. 

Man's supernaturalistic instinct does not materially 
differ from all his primitive notions or instincts. If 
man's instinctive astronomy had been merely opposed, 
astronomy would still have been where religion now is 
— " as it was in the beginning." Ignorance, error, and 
egotism are remarkably proportioned. 

Except breathing, nothing could have been more 
natural to primitive man than " supernaturalism." It 
was humanity's common instinct, or religion. As such, 
it is therefore that law, to which all others must be re- 
ferable and subordinate, which will constantly become 
higher, till scientific certainty, or the highest law is at- 
tained ; and the utter destruction of which law, at any 
stage of its progress, would sink man below the meanest 
beasts, whom simple mentality leads directly to their goal. 
" Supernaturalism" was the first advance which per- 
fect ignorance could make towards understanding, or 
knowledge. It was the cradle hymn of humanity's 
mental infancy. It preserved that infancy from statical 
error, or despair. It was, and is, man's crude, yet (hav- 
ing nature's guarantee,) full assurance of the perfection 
to which he will actually and of course on earth, arrive. 
Man cannot conceive, and therefore cannot desire the 
annihilation of time, space, and means ; in short, miracle. 
Thus, all that man really wishes, nature contains the 
rough material for ; and, though man may long neglect 



22 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

and abuse, he eventually must use it. Human feeling- 
is significant and prophetic of, and a guarantee for 
satisfaction — though it seems, at present to have exist- 
ed for the especial purpose of being suppressed. 

If supernaturalism was not natural, man could never 
have had anything to do with it; nor could he have 
exercised the least shadow of thought upon it. 

Supernaturalism consists of naturalism in a condition 
so undeveloped and therefore mysterious, as to seem, 
except to the scientific seer, wholly out of nature ; or 
wholly erroneous. Reason, therefore, allies itself with 
barren skepticism, which, mistaking my present partially 
developed and almost wholly unjoined parts for all I 
am capable of being, strives to reconcile man with what 
is considered from this point of view " practical," 

Reason and skepticism would indiscriminately anni- 
hilate supernaturalism ; yet when asked humanity's 
great question — "If you destroy our religion, what 
will you give us in its stead ?" this is practically the 
answer : 

"We will give you relief from the fear of future 
punishment, if you happen to have the leisure and 
ability to become philosophers. Learn to smother your 
wild aspirations, and to subdue those extravagant desires 
for perfect happiness, with which you are endowed but 
to tantalize and befool you. 

Govern — nay, suppress your natural passions ; curtail 
yourself down to the point below which would be suicide 
even in vulgar estimation. 

You are but dreaming, when you think that nature's 
power, whether in or out of nature, will not sooner fail, 
and prove bankrupt, than pay all which the impatient 
human passions " feel" they are that power's pledges to 
pay. 

Beware ot Utopias, both spiritual and temporal. 

"Whenever, "in the course of human events," mon- 
archy becomes unbearable, the blood remedy will be at 
jour service, and patriotism will be on hand to stir up 
popular folly, in the name of liberty, to transfer you, 



INTRODUCTORY. 2S 

through glory and rapine, to demagogocracy ; and when 
that, backed by the force of majority despotism, becomes 
too ^' smart" to be endured, you can wade through hu- 
man gore back again to monarchy, via military dic- 
tatorship. 

If you are poor, as nine-tenths of you must inevit- 
ably be, amuse yourselves by striving, by every possible 
means, to become rich. Keep it constantly in view 
that " a penny a day is a pound a year," and that in- 
dulgence in pleasure will most probably end in depriva- 
tion of even comfort. You may thus, if you are un- 
commonly lucky, succeed in accumulating a fortune, to 
torment you through life with its guardianship, and be 
transmitted to your heirs, for them to be tormented with 
in turn, squander, or be cheated out of. 

Jog along somehow, and at last stoically meet a pain- 
ful — probably a lingering death, and philosophically re- 
sign yourselves back to the unconscious elements from 
whence you sprang." 

Is this nature's ultimatum ? History and experience, 
very narrowly and literally construed, say yes ; and 
skepticism allows the blind and stupid verdict to be 
recorded without taking exceptions. But science, who 
sees best when the object is not stuck quite into its eyes, 
at length, most emphatically and demonstrably says no ; 
even human instinct — faith — is longer-sighted, and there- 
fore a better judge here than are imperfect reason and 
nugatory skepticism. For ahsolute evil has no existence ; 
what seems to be evil, being either unused or misused 
good. 

Is it not certain, that so long as supernaturalism is 
indiscriminately ojpjposed^ it will continue to ally itself 
wholly with popular folly, and that religious, political, 
and moral quacks and impostors will have it pretty 
much their own way, and keep earth such a hell, that 
man will continue to look beyond the skies, for the hap- 
piness, liberty, and perfection, which he Icnows are his 
due somehow^ and which he will despair of obtaining here 
below ? 



4 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

Notwithstanding the helter-skelter knowledge which 
the nineteenth century boasts ; and strives to dissemi- 
nate in separate branches ; notwithstanding the freedom 
of the multitude, to make whatever out of all this jum- 
ble of isolated facts, their leisure and hood-winked capa- 
cities permit ; is not that basis of free discussion — Pro- 
testantism — losing ground ? and do not Mormonism, 
Millerism, pseudo-Sabbathism, and a hundred other isms, 
demonstrate that it is as easy to deceive the many, even 
now; and that, too, as grossly, as it was during the 
darkest ages ? 

If the masses are as capable of reasoning as infidelity 
supposes them to be — could free discussion succeed in 
convincing all, that " divine revelation" is the fallacy 
it is — could even priestcraft be annihilated — what prac- 
tical good would all this effect ? Systems cannot, how- 
ever absurd, be so bad, as not to be better than none; 
and, therefore, they who have no better ones to offer, 
have no right to destroy, or rather attempt to destroy, 
those which exist. What can mere negation do ? 

Man cannot need, cannot be imagined to have, and 
therefore does not, in reality desire, more than nature 
can give ; for even eternity is substantially^ through de- 
velopement of nature, realizable in time ; sufficient time 
is all that man can conceive or desire of eternity. 

But primitive ignorance, systematically confirmed 
by popular education, so jumbles together man's ideas, 
that he knows not what he asks, and therefore asks what 
he wants not ; he misconceives his own desires, and con- 
sequently pronounces nature insufficient to satisfy them. 
He does not see that jpleasurahle self-consciousness is in 
its very nature adapted on\j to sufficieoit time j that it 
cannot rationally be desired to be extended eternally ; 
nor that absolutely individual liberty, happiness, or 
goodness, are no more conceivable, and therefore, in re- 
ality, no more desirable, than are independent rotary 
and orbital motion for each ultimate particle of matter. 
The most selfish man always^ though often unconscious- 
ly^ associates even his happiness with that of others ; 



INTRODUCTOET. 25 

and he never imagines himself disconnected, even as a 
disembodied spirit, from all other sentient beings. 

Happiness and liberty are arts ; and the business of 
the leaders of mankind — and man must have leaders, or 
sink below Zoophytes — is to find out the knowledge — the 
science — of those arts, and to instruct the people in their 
practice. 

And the assurance that leaders will very soon lead 
the people right instead of wrong, happily consists in 
the fact, that henceforth, leaders cannot help very rapid- 
ly finding out the right way, and, simultaneously, that 
even pure selfihsness will compel them to lead man 
therein. 

Passions, I know your power. The universe, con- 
tains no force sufficient to even trifie with it, with im- 
punity. Still, I fearlessly ask you to confederate with 
me, on these terms : 

By nature's laws as they will^ through me, stand re- 
vealed, you shall have in this terrestrial sphere, all which 
you crave. What say you ? 

The Passions. Science, we know you only by report, 
which says you are a dry and tiresome fellow, composed 
of angles, squares, cubes, circles, Physics, Chemistry, 
Physiology — 

Science. Spare further numeration. These, and 
more of equal dryness, are my elements ; which separ- 
ately though next to nothing, yet adjusted, organized, 
combined, leagued with you^ with all of simple nature 
for our base, and reason (whom I perceive is getting dis- 
gusted with skepticism, and is more than half discourag- 
ed with his bad success as a motor) for our aid, will 
create man the veritable Supreme Intelligent Being, 
whose function it will be, io fully accomjplish both phys- 
ical and human nature — to end the apparently to be 
eternal war ruow raging throughout. 

SuPERNATHRALisM. \_To Demagogism?\ If this con- 
federacy does prevail, I shall be superseded. You, the 
mere effluvia of that decay which I have long been un- 
dergoing, will be naught. Our reign, though seemingly 



26 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



endangered by opposition, has long been thereby, actu- 
ally secured ; action against us has begotten reaction 
for us, and obscured the real cause of evil, and conse- 
quently the remedy ; and our power has returned, and 
always with a force, proportionate to that which tempor- 
arily sent it from us. 

If Science would, like Reason, attack us with the 
weapons of debate, and leave those to wield them, whose 
reasoning faculties^ whilst in the hud^ I fashioned or 
suppressed to suit my ends^ this would inflate vain folly 
yet again, place learned sophistry above plain sense, 
and thus disgust the Passions with their new allies, and 
send them back to our aid. This, could it be compassed, 
would continue subjectivity above objectivity ; keep 
great ignorance still in power, and us, its directors, at the 
head, and man still tyranizing over, instead of scientifi- 
cally perfecting himself. Man never is so much a slave 
as when he is riveting his own chains, and thinks it 
liberty. Majority force, under some of its aliases, has 
ulways backed those who governed — tyranized— and 
always must, till how to do^ supersedes ought to do in So- 
ciology as in simpler mechanics. 

But science, even in her elements or lowest states, 
admits of no debate ; popular folly, courteously termed 
opinion, is scouted thence. Least of all, can the Science 
of Sciences be evolved by, or submitted to, popular dis- 
cussion. We are doomed. 

Virtue. But, surely, I cannot be dispensed with. 
And yet I will never consort with the Passions. Proud 
Science, I defy you. 

Science. I will soon and easily put an end to your 
mission of misery. You are so narrow, by your own 
confession, that this world, even now, contains no corner 
small enough for your convenience ; and when it, and 
man, are complete, when development eliminates moral 
narrowness altogether, where will you be then ? Die you 
must ; and to console you, that which you made promi- 
nent, and so efi'ectually served to keep in being — vice — 
shall die with you. 



INTEODUOTORY. 27 

Can man, through me, not dispense with you. a 
mere smotherer of joy, at best striving to reconcile man 
to the permanency of evil ? Poverty is your father, 
ignorance was your grandfather, and self conceit is your 
sponsor : these being in the majority, your influence is 
so dangerous that you cause even wholesale suicide to 
be committed unawares ; and you and your family have 
hitherto managed to cause your system to be applauded 
instead of condemned, to an extent which man will hard- 
ly credit when he comes to his senses ; for although your 
very existence depends on the sophistry which obfuscates 
all that is true in ^' supernaturalism" — on mere subjectiv- 
ity — you have, somehow, more influence over the op- 
ponents of '^supernaturalism" than over its friends. 
Neither St. Paul, Ignatius Loyola, Pobespiere,"^ nor the 
simplest and most unpretending supernaturalists have 
ever loved you except for the sake of whal you promised 
them : but skeptics have actually undertaken to love, and 
persuade others to love you, for your own sake ; thus 
falling into the absurdity of adopting the most superna- 
turalistic part of " supernaturalism." 

I am able, through natural n^eans, to fully liberate 
man. You have thus far with fatal efi*ect, taught him 
that to war against and mortify his desires was noble ; 
you have thus deluded him into self-ensalvement, '^ self- 
conquest," self-murder. 

You have, indeed, forbidden man to put an abrupt 
end to his existence, as if on purpose to afford yourself 
the pleasure of gloating over the long torture you per- 
suaded him to murder himself by means of, instead. 

* " His [Robespiere] speeches are entirely on mm'dlity. He professes 
jprinciples^ nothing but principles." — Lewes's Life of Robespiere. 

One of Robespiere's cardinal virtuous principles was, that society had 
no right to inflict the death-penalty for any crime. How utterly unable 
did he afterwards prove to accord his practice with his principles? So 
much for "virtue;" so much for " principles;" so much for subjectivity's 
governing objectivity ; so much for humanity's great scourge — individual- 
ly attempted morality. Yerily seZf-righteousness is, of all things, most 
comparable to "filthy rags," and the individual, unless scientifically and 
accordantly aided by the almighty power oi all in his connection, "can do 
nothing" but evil 



28 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

If poverty was banished, if nature was so scientifical- 
ly developed and man so scientifically organized and 
harmonized that every desire could be gratified, what 
would be the plea for virtue ? where would be vice ? 
Could such absurdities be even conceived of? But for 
poverty, misery, and " vice," surely " virtue" could not 
be even dreamed to exist. 

It is as impossible to act against circumstances as it is 
to believe against evidence. Religious tyranny can but 
extort wordy assent, which is easily given ; whereas vir- 
tuous tyranny requires active compliance ; and that, too, 
by individuals / the latter tyranny is therefore as much 
more despotic than the former, as doing^ by individuals^ 
is more difficult than saying. 

In the department of chastity, you are but a cover of 
consciously or unconsciously committed unmentionable 
and deathly crime. Oh, thou painted sepulchre ! But 
your days, and those of your scape-goat — Vice, are al- 
most numbered. Man, at length thoroughly sick of the 
cankerous moral philosophy of the Fox who didn't know 
how to get the grapes, is about to be neither an igno- 
rance-trammeled slave, nor a virtue and vice-maimed 
cripple, but his full, unrepressed self. 



FUJVDAMElVTAIi AWB ARGUI!IE]¥TATIVE. 



Sec. 1. Law is inseparable from existence. Nothing 
either subjective or objective can be devoid of mode of 
manner. We mistakenly pronounce the law of anything 
good or bad, in proportion as, through our faculties of 
perception, we are pleasurably or painfully aJQfected 
thereby ; not discerning that imperfection exists only in 
our knowledge ; or rather consists in a lack of attainable 
knowledge. Law affects us as good instinctively, spon- 
taneously, or in consequence of nature's ^r^?^ and simplest 
method, to but a very limited extent; beyond which, the 
fact that nature's laws affect us unfavorably, is only a 
proof that science, nature's second and more complicated 
method, has not there, yet, done its office. Nature spon- 
taneuosly does little more for man than to give him good 
desires — desires for happiness — and the rough material 
for the means whereby to realize their satifaction. 

Phenomena and their laws, from the most general 
and simple to the most special and complex of which the 
senses, directly or indirectly, can take cognizance, con- 
stitute all about which anything can or need be known • 
and to talk about existences, of the mode of which we 
confess ourselves hopelessly ignorant, is simply to perpe- 
trate jargon. "We are concerned with phenomena 
alone," says Auguste Comte, " and what we have to as- 
certain is their laws. In departing from this rule, we 
leave behind us all the certainty and consistency of real 
science." 

There are no perceptible yet inexplicable phenomena, 
at least no phenomena not explicable to the extent neces- 
sary, since, in the language of the great master just named, 
" in proportion as phenomena become complicated, they 



30 THE BELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

thereby become explorable under a proportionate variety 
of relations." The only limit to human power to modify 
phenomena, will prove'to be human desire; as we shall 
herein fully show. 

Sec. 2 All science must have its corresponding art. 
The conceivable must be possible. There can be no such 
thing as an impracticable theory, nor need conceptions 
at first be minutely or fully elaborated as to details, to 
entitle them to the dignity of theories. Great scentific 
conceptions cannot, at first, be more than skeletons. But 
we must be sure that what we call theories, or concep- 
tion?, are really such ; that they agree with themselves at 
the commencement, and that as they proceed, they do 
not aim to contravene any law of nature, or to transcend 
the intelligible. 

The combination of all human and other natural 
power involved therewith for the perfection of human 
happiness on earth — the adjusting of all which now rend- 
ers it impossible to do right so as to render it equally 
impossible to do wrong — will form a point in progress to 
which it is as evident that theory can extend, as it is 
that nature has not endowed man with desires but to 
mock him ; and beyond this limit conception can no 
more traverse, than we can take cognizance of that, be- 
tween us and which, there is no connection. 

Sec. 3. All mankind, and all the rest of nature of 
which any conception can be formed, are theoretically, 
and therefore practically connected. Such connection, 
from the point whence mere instinct ceases to make it 
beneficial, being antagonistic and evil, until science 
makes it harmonious and good. - 

Though there is no point of complete separation 
between the individuals composing humanity, nor 
between humanity and the rest oi perceptible nature, this 
is not saying that there is no variety in nature, nor that 
there should be no grades among the various races and 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 31 

individuals of which humanity is composed ; and this 
does no more infer a unity of origin in the usual sense 
of the term, with respect to races, than it does with re- 
spect to individuals. But that this theory does infer 
that which is oi vital Siud practical importance, will be 
made manifest in the course of this work. 

Seo. 4. Sentient beings possess but half the fac- 
ulty to think. Such faculty or power being a duality/ 
mutually belonging to sentient beings, and to whatever 
else in perceptahle nature is, in any conceivable way, 
connected with them. 

The subjective, or receptive half of the faculty of 
thought, being the point whereon the whole force of the 
objective, or imparting half of the faculty is con- 
centrated, the first half of the faculty receives an impres- 
sion^ which has obtained the name of memory. Memory, 
like the apparent fire which a swiftly twirled live coal 
leaves in its train, becomes objective for a longer or 
shorter time, in proportion as it was vividly or faintly 
produced. Both the first and last impressions which the 
subjective mental faculties receive from the objective 
ones, are incapable of producing memory ; the mind, 
soul, spirit, or consciousness of existence vanishing almost 
simultaneously with its formation. The psychologic 
effect which lasts the longest, is that which results from 
the impressions which the objective or imparting psy- 
chical or mental faculties, make on the subjective or 
receptive ones, after the latter have become well used 
to, but not too long practiced on by, the former. 

If what are now called old people, sometimes retain 
to the last, a power of memory somewhat approximating 
to what it was during what now passes for full human 
vigor, we must not forget that there are now no really 
old people, none who go back to their elements solely in 
consequence of old age. All, however, who reach the 
now middle age, know that memory, mind, soul, or spirit 
is not, even then, near so lasting or permanent as it was 
in youth. Only like any other purely subjective abstrac- 



32 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

tion caD mind be conceived of as objective ; yet even such 
illusory objectivity as this, has given rise to the absurdity 
that mind is an entit3\ 

Thought or consciousness is definitely attained or 
achieved, at points formed by sentient beings, or rather 
by the brains of such, in a manner somewhat analogous 
to that in which light is specially manifested at points 
composed by the spheroids which swim in universal ether 
in accordance with the laws both of themselves and of 
that ether from which they were agglomerated. Tet 
sentient beings endowed with speech, with here and there 
an exception claim, of themselves, to absolutely think ; 
and to be able so to do even when there shall be nothing 
to be thought of; — as if the sun, or any other luminous 
body could shine, if there was nothing to be shone on. 
(don't forget, here, that a;p^^r^7iz^ space is something;) 
And the mass of such beings, and of course those who 
have the least to do with thinking, claim that their think- 
ing is so important to be eternally kept up, that they feel 
that it must be an indestructible entity. " No one," says 
La Bruyer^ " ever thought small beer of himself, in con- 
sequence of being justly comparable to it." 

All man's conceptions and desires are natural ones ; 
and it is only because they are so ill digested, and have 
been so ignorantly tampered with, that some of them are 
insanely pronounced supernatural, or heavenly, and 
others sub-natural, or hellish. 

Sec. 5. Man's desires being but natural ones, are 
nature's pledge or guarrantee for their complete and 
entire disabuse, vindication and satisfacHfeion. But we 
must bear in mind that nature works by means — through 
development — and that time, space, and circumstances 
cannot be annihilated, even to accomodate the overween- 
ing egotism inseparable from humanity's components 
during the progressive and imperfect stages of man's 
career. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 33 

Sec. 6. As man cannot go out of nature ev^en in 
thought, and as nature, in man's desires, has given him 
a pledge for perfect, and satisfactorily lasting, or, as it is 
called " eternal" happiness — a pledge for a happiness, 
the intensity and length of which, shall wear out the de- 
sire for conscious existence — shall ring, till they become 
irksome, all the changes possible to be rung on the live 
senses — man's whole business is to find out, and put in 
execution, the law whereby nature may be made to re- 
deem that pledge. That will be ihQ veritable Highest 
Law, and one with The Religion of Science. Here, 
Church and State will re-unite ; and the first, by being 
based on the comprehensible, will convert the second 
from a " necessary evil" to a positive good. 

Sec. 7. The Religion of Science, even prospectively 
affords its professors a satisfaction worth vastly more 
than all the consolation which " supernaturalism" im- 
ports to its dupes. If The Religion of Science deprives 
its adherents of visionary hopes, it also relieves them 
from imaginary fears; and elevates them, through the 
contemplation of man's glorious and real future, ai^d 
through the consciousness that they are, as fast as cir- 
cumstances will permit, hastening it on, above the most 
poignant miseries of the present. They may almost be 
said to live in the future, during the short time they stay 
in the present. 

Sec. 8. Forced to concede the possibility of human 
perfection, man strives to hide his ignorance and excuse 
his laziness in the case, by postponing the whole matter 
to an incomprehensible state of existence, to which, it is 
insanely imagined man is destined after death ! 

Sec. 9. That the demand for perfect, and, as it is 
called " eternal" happiness, is a natural one, is self-evi- 
dent. That natural demands can be met only by natural 
supplies, is also self-evident. But that nature will prove 
unable to pay the debts she has incurred^ and allow the 



34 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

drafts sTie has accented to be protested- — that materiality 
will prove to be the shavi^ and immateriality the real — 
are assumptions, than which, more absurd ones cannot 
be imagined. 

Sec. 10. The question as to whether matter origin- 
ated from nothing, deserves not a moments consideration. 
The question as to whether the mdoe or state of its exist- 
ence proves the existence of an external motor, may be 
disposed of by asking how matter should act so as to dis- 
prove, or at least cease to prove such supernatural exist- 
ence. For if no alternative to the present spontaneous 
action or laws of nature can be shown even in theory, 
the inference surely must be, that what is called the 
adaptation of means to ends, does not prove design. Be- 
sides, if the order and adaptedness which characterizes 
the perceptible proves a designer, the necessarily supe- 
rior order and adaptedness of the supposed designer, 
must prove an antecedent one and so on. If gravitation 
proves the existence of an external motor, it must require 
its reversal to disprove the existence of one. If seeing 
by means of eyes, light, and objects, proves the existence 
of an ultranatural power, seeing without these, can alone 
disprove such existence. But are seeing without eyes, 
and the reversal of gravitation, imaginable ? The entire 
reversal of the present order of nature could alone ne- 
cessitate, and prove supernaturalism. 

Sec. 11. Absolute destruction is as impossible as is 
absolute creation. Nature is one vast system of change, 
displacement, reorganization, working out perfection. 
Existence will work itself more and more refined till it 
developes to the perfection point indicated by the high- 
est desires it has, for a guiding star as it were, implanted 
in its most intelligent creation — its cerebrum — man. 

Sec. 12 Science annihilates mystery, development 
progresses, and man approaches his destination — perfec- 
tion, with a multiplication of means, and an increase of 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AEGUMENTATIVE. 35 

speed, exactly proportioned to those which, directly as to 
quantity, and inversely as the square of distance, accele- 
rate gravitation ; except that the speed of development 
— of human progress — does not increase with the uni- 
formity which characterizes that of gravitation ; but 
time and velocity are each others exponents or indexes 
equally in both cases ; and progress, like gravitation, is 
only manifest near, and felt at, completion ; even when 
retrogression seems to be taking place in human affairs, 
the law that reaction must be equal to action is not bro- 
ken as the event will prove ; and nature cannot stop 
short of accomplishing what it is acknowledged that she, 
or he7' power ^ has begun and is constantly working at — 
human perfection. By asserting that she can do so, 
skepticism beats credulity at the game of absurdity. 

Humanity-perfecting action will prove to be fully 
adequate to overcome all the old fogyistic or other count- 
eraction which is or can be opposed to it ; on the same 
principle that nothing could resist the tendency of ether 
in apparent space to agglomerate and finally permanent- 
ly equilibriate our solar system. But more of this anon. 
All, within the range of thought, being connected, 
there can be no such thing as isolated, or individual evil, 
wrong, or crime; the diseases of the collective, like those 
of the individual human organism, are general ; and to 
attempt to cure them at the points, always the weakest^ 
where mere manifestation occurs, is stone blind empiri- 
cism and quackery, or the imposture which, however 
cunning it may be, has but a glimmering and most nar- 
row conception of the real interests of its practicer. 

As medical science advances, general treatment sup- 
ersedes the special treatment of all diseases ; and empi- 
ricism and quackery, and the evils (diseases) of the col- 
lective body, which these do but augment and aggravate, 
will give way only to an enlightened, scientific, and gen- 
eral treatment. I most earnestly appeal to facts: when 
it was attempted, in England, to cure " crime," or the 
disease of the collective human organism, at the point of 
manifestation, (the individual) by punishing it to the hor- 



36 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

rible extent of hanging for petty larceny, all '' crime'^ 
was more prevalent than now ; and '' crime" has de- 
creased in the same proportion as scientific ^^^^raZ treat- 
ment has superceded empirical, quackish, and special 
methods ; due alloioance heing made for disturljing caus- 
es^ such as increased commerce, and increased machine- 
power, with no equitable arrangement between labor, 
capital and skill which these so pressingly, and constantly 
more and more so, demand. 

Punishing, or rather attempting to punish '' crime" 
does but augment it, and subject the inflictors of whole- 
sale wrong on wrong, to the " damnation" which " doing 
evil that good may come^^ justly imposes. 

If there was no vindictive punishment for murder, 
people would be more cautious how they oflfended each 
other. And few are so utterly destitute of magnanimity 
that in their calm moments, they would deal death on a. 
foe for whose protection no statute law existed ; and need 
it be said that statute law has no efi'ect on the evil in- 
clined when in a passion, except to enrage their passions 
still more, even to blindness ? 

Never trust human nature by halves. The instant 
it discovers that it is suspected, it feels released from hon- 
orary obligation ; and the instant it finds itself opposed, 
it feels a sense of cowardice if it does not oppose in turn y 
and the question of right or wrong becomes of secondary 
consideration. 

The only interests that would suffer from an immedi- 
ate repeal of all law which has to he written^ are those of 
its manufacturers, pedlers, and executors. 

When to owe debts without being able to pay them 
ceased to be a crime, the force — the life of all written 
laws for collecting debts departed; and such laws should 
have been formally as they were really abolished, and 
buried out of sight and smell, like other dead bodies. 
Had they been so, unpayable debt instead of overwhelm- 
ing the world like a deluge, would never have been 
known. But when man relased himself from \\iq penal 
obligation of debt, he, by law-craft, was bamboozled into 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 37 

committing the fatal blunder of releasing himself also from 
the honorary obligation of it. 

The principal results of the punishing system are, 
that innocent people are convicted and hanged or im- 
prisoned to a frightful extent ; artificial crimes are crea- 
ted and punished or black-mailed ; and whilst the imme- 
diate perpetrators of real evil can provide their straw- 
bail before hand, they can, and with truth, tell their vic- 
tim, after the fact — " if you dare complain, you will be 
imprisoned as a witness against me, whilst I shall only 
be subjected to the loss of one more customer." 

To talk about doing away with vindictive punishments 
when their necessity ceases, is to perpetrate the most pi- 
tiable twaddle. The vindictive punishment of '' crime," 
by civilized nations or communities, never was, is not, 
and never can be, any more necessary than is the excis- 
ion of those parts of the body where leprosy or confirmed 
lues venerea manifest themselves. Cure can be comple- 
ted, through punishment or excision, only by annihilat- 
ing the patient — the whole community. Punishing 
" crime" in France, culminated in the execution of the 
virtuous, the incorruptible, the most thoroughly princi- 
pled Bobespiere. 

Owing to original ignorance, but mainly to the quack- 
ish manner in which that disease has been tampered 
with, it is necessary to ^v^^Xj palliatives and emollients 
to, and to take more tender care of, those parts of the col- 
lective human organism where evil manifests itself; as 
Buch auxiliaries to general treatment are now had re- 
course to in enlightened medical practice. All our gibbets 
should be immediately abolished, and all our prisons 
should be metamorphosed into hospitals for the cure, or 
industrial, associative, joint stock schools for the preven- 
tion of " crime." 

If there is a shadow of excuse for vindictiveness, it 
belongs exclusively to individuals, though arrogantly 
claimed by the body politic. Owing to the neglect of the 
collective body to take either general or palliative mea- 
sures; but, on the contrary, the most aggravable ones, those 



38 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

parts in collective man, nearest to where moral disease man- 
ifests itself, become so outraged thereby, that excision by 
them — they having none of the collective body's means 
at command — may be necessary to self-preservation. 
But this can never, except during revolutions, and very 
seldom even then, be the excuse of civilized nations. 
Society has become so ashamed of her most abominable 
" crime" — cold-blooded, judicial murder — that she gene- 
rally commits it privately, instead of openly, as she used 
to do. 

Ignorance is the only excuse which can be made for 
the vindictiveness exercised by nations on individuals ; 
and as soon as the Keligion of Science extends so far as 
even to render the knowledge of this most important 
truth general, the very foundation of all evil will have 
been sapped, and the superstructure will be displaced 
by one all good., with the rapidity with which practice 
always takes place after its theorj^ is fully conceived of. 

Christianism does not base the forgiveness of " sin" 
on an enlightened sense of the folly and barbarity of 
punishing it, but on the refined cruelty of punishing it 
eternally. 

Sec. 13. But this vindictiveness now discountenanced 
by even fragmentary science, is kept up by the "pre- 
vailing religion," — with most marvellous impudence 
named Christianity ; consisting in a systematic emascula- 
tion of the highest intellectual faculties — in crippling the 
brain in infancy as efi*ectually as the Chinese do the feet 
of their females. Modern Christianity is a perfectly or- 
ganized and consequently most powerful corporation for 
carrying on the internal business of keeping the know- 
ledge of the masses strictly within the bounds of what 
man knew '' in the beginning," so far as matters of gene- 
ral and all important interest are concerned. The only 
open opponent to this giant evil is the little pigmy, free 
discussion ; who, like an idiot holding a candle for a blind 
man to read by, is most unreasonably presenting reason 
to those whose brains, except for the commonest emergen- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 39 

cies, might as well be so much blanc mange — whose 
reasoning faculties are so completely paralyzed as to be 
able only to appreciate, with respect to " the faith that 
is in them," that " it is written," and that their religious 
guides, who have studied the thing, and ought to know 
best, profess it. 

At first, the giant in a passion treated the pigmy 
rather roughly ; but revenge satiated, he now treats him 
with utter contempt, and seems rather amused than 
otherwise at his extreme simplicity. Science as yet be- 
ing but in its elements, and consequently fragmentary, 
the managers of the "prevailing religion " subsidize it, 
and indulge its professors in common with themselves, 
in Pantheism, which, slightly disguised, is in the most 
fashionable churches, now preached to them, and at the 
sleeping or completely bewildered and awe struck masses. 
What the " dear people" consider a " free press" is so 
directly or indirectly corrupted, that the villainous pro- 
ceedings of the perpetuators of popular folly are daily 
chronicled under the respectable head of "Eeligious In- 
telligence" instead of under that of Wholesale Rascality. 
Or does 'S^ascality" cease to be such, the moment it be- 
becomes wholesale? is the witch who deals out super- 
naturalism by the fifty cents worth guilty, whilst the 
clergyman who deals it out in five or ten thousand dollar 
parcels, is a worthy and honorable member of society ? 

With respect to the intrinsic value of reason ; — man, 
like lower animals, has both reason and instinct; and 
these are so near akin at the point of connection, that 
that exact point has never been definitely settled ; though 
at wide distances from it, the diff'erence between instinct 
and reason is clear enough. Man is not endowed with a 
supersensuous faculty ; there is therefore no possible ab- 
surdity, the blindest faith included, into which he has not 
reasoned himself. Supernaturalists reason even when 
decrying reason — they reason against reason, unaware ; 
but skeptics accuse them of adopting, through faith, a 
set of principles without the aid of reason ; the skeptic 
thus falls into the dilemma of acknowledging man's mind 



40 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

to have something super-reasonable, super-sensuous, or, 
in short, supernatural about it; or else he proclaims the 
worse than inefficiency of his vaunted remedy — reason ; 
which, in point of fact, unaided by the Religion of Sci- 
ence, is as useless as the fifth wheel of a coach ; nay, it 
rather helps to destroy man's happiness — deluding man's 
leaders into thsit false selfishness which prompts them to 
mislead man to their mutual disadvantage, degrading 
humanity lower than mere instinct does any other animal. 
Man can be " saved," " redeemed," " born again," " cre- 
ated anew," in short, actually jperfected^ only by Science 
as a religion^ and through faith or confidence reposed 
therein ; reason will always be, as it always has been sub- 
ordinate to faith or confidence / and skepticism and free 
discussion will slink to far less proportions under the re- 
gime oi universal Science, than they enjoyed under that 
of Supernaturalism in its palmiest days. But this will 
be fully explained, as it alone can be, in connection with 
other matters, as we proceed. 

Sec. 14. When the Religion of Science is inaugur- 
ated, man will confide in Sociologians as, during the pal- 
miest days of the Catholic Church, he confided in theo- 
logians ; with this grand difierence, that the disciples of 
the Religion of Science will be their own judges with 
respect to results j which are to be produced m this 
matter of fact world. Under the Religion of Science, 
man will extend to the professors of the Science of 
Sciences and Art of Arts, the same confidence we now, 
without any fear of losing freedom, extend to the profes- 
sors of every art and science separately. The Religion 
of Science will hold those who profess to be working at 
human perfection, responsible for its production where 
we can judge of it; this will be depriving them of all 
chance of deceiving us by subterfuges, evasions, or 
shams. 

We have probably by this time made it very apparent 
that Sociologians, those through whose leadership man 
is to become actually free — cannot be constituted through 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 41 

what IS, with most insulting impudence, named the elec- 
tive franchise. The professors of the Science of Sciences 
and Art of Arts, — the leaders in the body politic — must 
be, like professors of fragmentary science and art, and 
like the leading organs of the individual body, spontane- 
ousl}^ constituted. How, I have very minutely explained 
in a former work, "The Essence of Science." 

Wherever the triumph of even any fragment of sci- 
ence is complete, freedom of opinion is destroyed ; and 
certainly puts an end to free discussion; and the most 
stubborn opponents of faith submit like very lambs to their 
tailors and even barbers ; whom they spontaneously and 
thus really elect such, simultaneously with^ instead of 
hefore trial. 

^^ The elective franchise" is an exploded Utopia; 
an experiment, the failure of which is most complete. 

Error is legion, truth is one; wrong is almost infinite, 
right is but a point. To find this one, this point, is most 
difficult. To avoid this legion, this nearly infinite, is all 
but impossible. Let those who have discovered that 
Bupernaturalism is a delusion, beware of falling into the 
more fatal error of idolizing free discussion as an end, 
and of looking on that abomination — that wildest of Uto* 
pias — our present pseudo free government as a finality^ 
Democracy is confessedly a subordination of the highesfc 
to the lowest ; and free and indiscriminate or promiscu- 
ous discussion is little more than presenting illuminated 
objects to those whose organs of vision have been com- 
pletely incapacitated to perform the function of seeing. 
Even if the majority were capable of reasoning abstract- 
ly, or on subjects not iwmediatly and simply before 
them; still, reason cannot tell how to erect even a com- 
mon edifice ; much less the social one. Science must 
plan, and art execute; reason can at most but aid. 

Sec. 15. The science and art of human perfection is 
now m the condition of a watch in sections ; all ready to 
become itself as soon as its owners see the necessity of 
giving competent persons, instead of botches, a chance 

4 



42 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

to jmt it in that religious condition which alone can ena- 
ble it to fulfil its function — to keep time. 

There is a deeper philosophy hidden under the faith, 
however blind, which the multitude reposes in leaders,- 
however misguided, or even corrupt, when matters as 
complicated as religion are concerned, than in all which 
either skepticism or elective franchise logic has ever 
advanced ; a truth which can as easily withstand reason, 
ridicule, argument, or mere opposition, as Gibraltar can 
hold out against an attack with pop-guns ; however con- 
fidence may primarily be abused, its entire lack would 
savageize mankind; and the dupes of no faith are there- 
fore as much more ridiculous and foolish than are the 
dupes of the hlindest faith, as statical error would prove 
more fatal than dynamical error possibly could. 

Surely they who admire what they belive will fully 
gratify their desires though in a manner utterly incom- 
prehensible, are less to be laughed at, than are they who 
admire what they confess can give them but sufficient 
promise of happiness to lure them on to the endurance 
of misery. 

Skeptics admit that Mr. Hume was one of the most 
candid and exemplary of their order ; yet he, in speak- 
ing of that period of his life which he confessed he should 
most desire to ^' live over again," naively acknowledged, 
that being denied that privilege would only "cut off a 
few years of infirmities," and that he was as ready to die 
when " Charon called on him," as he could ever expect 
to be. 

The incoherent, isolated facts and truths, the mere 
fragments of science, so much lauded by free inquiry^ do 
but aggravate and mock the desire which supernatural- 
ism promises to satisfy ; and organization gives even 
chimerical religion the advantage which it always has 
held, and will continue to hold, till science claims reli- 
gion for its own. How much longer will the disciples of 
reason remain blind to the dictates of the plainest good 
sense? How much longer shall science be denied that 
XQ\\g\0Vi^ finishing — that arrangement — which shall fit it 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 43 

to its art: ; the art of imparting to man, in this worlds the 
perfection he is determhied to have in spite of death it- 
self? How can the masses understand and apply all the 
specialities of science in detail ? 

The rational end of all the sciences and arts is the 
perfection of human happiness; as the end of all the 
wheels, springs &c., of a watch is to keep time ; and the 
organization of what is incoherently supposed to be ul- 
tranaturalism — something beyond or superior to substan- 
tial existence — which nothingists so absurdly condemn, 
and so ridicolously ridicule, was the embryo if that of 
all science as a coherent, harmonious whole ; of the Re- 
ligion of Science ; which will triumph in spite of Pro- 
testantism, Skepticism, and demagogocracy ; which will 
develop, combine, and adjust all the latent, and appar- 
ently antagonistic faculties of nature, and thus make 
them perfectly satisfy instead of balking, all man's de- 
sires. 

If man's desire for perfect and substantially eternal 
happiness is a natural one, to pronounce its satisfaction 
on earth an impossibility, is not only an open declaration 
of war against nature, but it is to assert that nature is a 
stupenduous hoax. If the desire in question is not a na- 
tural one, then the whole ground of naturalism is evi- 
dently surrendered. Let the skeptics — the disciples of 
perpetual indecision and never ending free discussion — 
extricate themselves from this dilemma, except by em- 
bracino-The Religrion of Science, if thev can. 

I am well aware that negativists advocate the teach- 
ing of the hranclies of the sciences and arts, together 
with free discussion; and that many attempts to substi- 
tute departmental science and art, for religion have been 
made and failed. But the sciences, or rather their sub- 
stance, must be made a 'religion of — a harmoniously con- 
nected whole, including all about which aught is pre- 
tended to be known ; and until they are so, man will no 
more receive them in substitution for even the religion of 
supernaturalism, than a sane man would exchange a 
watch which kept ever so imperfect time, for a promis- 



44 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

cuous handful of watch wheels, springs, chrystals, dials, 
&c., &c. Man will no more exchange even the misera- 
ble apologj^ for religion which even the effluvia from the 
dead carcase of ultranaturalism still supplies, for the 
sciences and arts in their present incoherent and there- 
fore all but fruitless condition from a happiness point of 
view, than he will accept, for music, those horribly dis- 
cordant sounds, which even the best players would- make 
with the best instruments, were they — the players — to 
simultaneously attempt to play whatever tunes each might 
individually choose: and as to arguing or laughing man 
out of that which promises him eternal joys, in favor of 
what he plainly sees gives him next to nothing; the ex- 
periment has been tried long enough, and failed hadly 
enough. 

Sec. 16. Supernaturalism is the bed on which man 
reposes provisionally ; or, until he can find a better rest- 
ing place, Supernaturalism, therefore, cannot be abolished 
or even, advantageously, to man, disturbed, except by 
the science and art which can substitute ^^t/^c?^ know- 
ledge for the mystery which promises to be such ; which 
can aciually give man that perfection which supernatu- 
ralism leads him to hope for. 

Although we must constantly endeavour to substitute 
knowledge for ignorance (alias mystery) and science for 
sophistry, we must not suppose that we are going toper- 
feet man through a gradual uniform process — that every 
step in improvement is going to produce its fruit as it is 
made. In proportion as the fruit of any measure is good, 
is it distant from the preliminaries which led to it. A 
knowledge of what the Religion of Science can produce, 
can not preliminarily extend except to the leaders in sci- 
entific sc^ciology ; nor can religious science ever be un- 
derstood by the masses except siniilarly as a knowledge 
of any of the branches of science now extends to those 
who do not make such know^ledge a profession. 

The immense advantage w^hich a civilized army pos- 
sesses over a savage one, results from the conviction that 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENT ATIYE. 4:5 

each individual has, that his efforts are being sustained 
bj those of the whole army ; and that on the safety of 
his comrades, his own depends. This is, to use a military 
phrase, the esprit de corps: and is possible only through 
scientific leadership, and scientific faith, or confidence. 
How much longer must it be before faith and leadership 
exist for constructive, instead of for perplexing, aggra- 
vative, or destructive purposes ; for mutual remuneration, 
instead of for plunder ? How much longer must it be 
ere man will understand the simple truth that the science 
of sciences of how to be good, happy, and free, can no 
more be elaborated at the polls, and through the ballot 
box than can any of the departments of science — that 
scientific laboratories are the only possible, real legisla- 
tive halls? 

Why is It not attempted to vote men astronomers — 
mathematicians — physicians — artists ? Why not talk 
about patriotism, good intention, honesty, and virtue, in 
connection with mathematics ? Moral principles are every 
bit as effectual in the calculation of eclipses, or in the 
regulation of a ship's course at sea, as in the regulation 
of the affairs of humanity. In confirmation of the truth 
of this assertion, I appeal to the World's history. Virtue 
and morality are based on gross ignorance of the laws of 
dctual existence ; they compose the great falsehood which 
science must eliminate, ere man can be free — good — in 
short, happy. 

Sec. 17. After mankind's leaders shall have been in- 
doctrinated in the theory of the Religion of Science, its 
progress will be as much more rapid than now, as 'the 
transmission of intelligence has been since the discovery 
of the Electric Telegraph. Mankind, in following their 
prejudices, do but follow their leaders ; and whenever 
their leaders, or the most influential of them, understand 
and promulgate the theory of the Religion of Science in- 
stead of obfuscating the intellect over that of mystery, the 
masses will follow them on the same principle they new 
do; and after a "nine day's wonder," their '^ convio- 
tions*^ will be " all right and straight." 



46 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

Sec. 18. To suppose that primitive man could have 
possessed — could have understood: — the true religion, is 
to suppose that the human race could, instantaneously, 
have been endowed with thousands of centuries of 
age. 

Sec 19. The speck of nature with wMich we have 
sensibly to do had, according to Geology, to work its way 
from the simple condition in which it filled the whole 
space now occupied by the Solar System. And our de- 
tachment of that speck, — the earth — has had to work its 
way through the granite, sandstone, and physical-monster 
animal epochs, and into the moral-monster man epoch. 
But it does seem to linger too long in the fogof superna- 
turalism. Protestantism, skepticism, moralism ; in short, 
vindictivism and opinionism ; and to be all hut stuck in 
the abominable slime of demagogocracy ; yet, its moral 
distance from these, we shall show, will be as great, as 
is its physical distance from even its etherial condition. 

Sec. 20. As to the apparent physical obstacles to 
The Religion of Science: just below the surface of the 
earth, the temperature is not affected by those circum- 
stances which cause the variety of climate above the sur- 
face; and Thermology and Electrology are not yet near 
understood. 

Fourier attempted to particularize too minutely from 
a too distant point of view ; and thus brought into disre- 
pute his otherwise glorious and profound conceptions. 
However, it is sufficiently evident that climate is modifi- 
able through human effort and improves through human 
progress ; and what is called " spiritualism" has, making 
reasonable allowance for exageration, furnished some 
presumptive evidence that naturejias, as she has so often 
done before revealed, or rather manifested the existence 
of some additional, and as yet wholly misunderstood 
laws. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUIMENTATIVE. 47 

Sec. 21. The masses can conceive of freedom, only 
as isolated, or absolutely independent action. Because 
our present elementar)- association imposes constraint, 
combined or connected action presents itself to the men- 
tally short sighted multitude only as shivery. Bat abso- 
lutely independent action is a chimera;. and the nearest 
approximation to it, ensures but the liberty of being sav- 
ages ; such slaves to want and deprivation, that they 
seldom know where their next meal is to come from ; 
(what self-denying, virtuous and m.oral beings, savages 
must be ) and have but a poor assurance of being allowed 
to finish the one they may be in the midst of. The liber- 
ty to trade \v\\qvq each individual choses, forces America 
to go to Europe for a market ; and this is a specimen of 
what liberty always does, where it precedes knowledge. 

Sec. 22. To differ in opinion is but a temporary 
shift. All talk about the rigJitto difference or contrariety 
of opinion as a permanency, or about the liberty w^hich 
can be thus secured or enjoyed, is humbug and clap-trap ; 
and pahningoff the perpetual exercise of such pretended 
right for an end — for an absolnte good — tor fj-eedom, is 
the most insulting imposition ; it is, in short demagogism. 
True liberty will consist in acting, in accomplishing our 
desires. The sum total of liberty is happiness. 

That contrariety of opinion and contrariety of action 
must go together, and that contrariet}^ of action must 
destroy freedom by collision, are truths too self-evident,' 
it would seem^ to need to bo^even stated. 

That freedom consists in, or can be obtained throught 
the liberty to differ from others in opinion, is a mos 
mischivous snare and an all but fatal delusion. For the 
moment men attempt to act in accordance with a contra- 
riety of opinion, mutual collision destroys nearly all 
freedom. 

Whenever the liberty to differ in opinion comes to be 
considered as a rights what becomes of the right to act 
in accordance with conviction? Since the weaker party 
— the minority — have to succomb ; and have to surrea- 



48 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

der their practical or active freedom to the mercy and 
discretion of the stronger — the majority, so soon as the 
weakness of the former and the strength of the latter, 
are, by the ballot box — the test of opinion — decided. The 
weaker, in virtue of the fancied rigJit to think heteroge- 
neonsly have to make an entire surrender to the stronger 
of their equally logical right to act in accordance with 
their own convictions ^ and this must be so, until collec- 
tive man is so scientifically organized, that the unity of 
thought and harmony of action which now obtains with 
respect to the lowest departments of human knowledge,, 
obtains in the highest. To teach men to think freely,, 
without teaching them how to act freely, is evidently as- 
cruel as to teach hopeless slaves their rights. 

Contrariety of opinion, instead of being a boon to be 
^' fought bled and died" for, and to be cherished and per- 
petuated as an end, is a monster evil — an all but over- 
whelming misfortune. It is any thing but a right. 

The religion of ultranaturalism attempted to cope 
with this giant evil, and did provisionally abate it, or hu- 
man progress never could have made the first step ; but 
its conquest was reserved for the Religion of Science. It 
alone can end that despotism which has thus far success- 
fully prsented itself, at least to the masses, as liberty. 
Science tolerates no freedom of opinion. It alone can, 
and it alone has a right to, abolish it. The respect which 
people imagine they so amiably pay to public opinion, is 
really paid to the impostors who shape that opinion. 
The public, now, has no opinion of its own ; its ideas are 
wholly borrowed. 

Sec. 23. As we historically trace man back tovmrds 
the period when nature rough-formed him, we find him, 
more and more madly, searching for what, if discovered, 
would reduce him to a mere instrument, convert nature 
herself into a vast jumble of inertia, nullify motive, 
paralyse efibrt, and render existence stale and objectless. 
For desire would straightway die of surfeit, could it ob- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 4:9 

tain all which fancy, supernaturalistically bewildered, 
and goaded on by egotism, imagines it would give it — 
an eternity to gratify itself in. 

''Annihilation" is really as dreadful retrospectively as 
prospectively ; yet no one trembles to. think that once he 
did not consciously exist. Dying is all that is dreadful 
in the case ; and that, we shall show, can and will be svh- 
^tantially diOnQ away with. :?% 

What possible good could it do man to know the ab- 
solute? By attem])ting to know the absolute, man is at- 
tempting to penetrate to the outside of everything. He 
is putting out his eyes, in order to gratify a barren curi- 
osity to see what there is behind them. Man really wants 
but to so fully know the phenomenal, as to be able to 
modify it to the extent the fulfilment of himself re- 
quires. 

Nature is more and more modifiable, as she becomes 
more refined. It has been demonstrated that light can 
be evolved by magnetic forces ; also that the atmosphere, 
and even the clouds are influnced by these forces, which 
man is. rapidly learning to modify. The Earth is capaci- 
tated to be supplied, through means which human effort 
can put into activity, with suflScient light and heat as 
near to both poles as shall prove necessary. 

Throughout all the departments of nature, the head,' 
the product, the end and aim comes last, and the rule 
will hold good with respect to the whole of nature, in 
man's connection. Man organized as a harmonious whole, 
will be the head and perfection of all nature in his con- 
nection. 

But the wild chase after the absolute— the Ultima-Tliule 
of dynamical error — we must by no means forget, was 
primeval man's only alternative to statical erroV, or an 
entire indecision which w^ould directly have proved fatal. 
To man's virgin perceptive faculties, all necessarily ap* 
peared supernatural. 

But in perfection as, though the senses, externalities 
impart science or knowledge to man, phenomena become 
understood; and in the same ratio ultranatural vanities 



60 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENOE. 



and absurdities vanish ; and this process will goon, with 
a rapidity increasing in the ratio of the mnltiplication of 
numbers by their own product, till man shall find in sim- 
ple, scientific and artistic nature — in the full develop- 
ment of himself and all with which he is connected — all 
the knowledge, all the goodness, and all the happiness he 
can understandingly desire, or of which he can really 
conceive. 

Nature 2X. first presents us with our statuary unchis- 
eled — in the unpromising quarry ; and all her benefits 
come to us at first, in the latent or disguised state ; nay, 
many of them come in the shape of immediate injuries. 
But those things which seemed raost destructive to our 
happiness, and even to our being, have been made favor- 
able to both. The apparent enmity of fire, steam, and 
electricity, has proved to be real friendship ; the only 
difiiculty in the case was man's ignorance. That which 
heals many of our diseases, pilots our ships across the 
trackless ocean, and carries our messages with the rapid- 
ity of thought, only a short time since did but destroy 
life, and reduce our dwellings to ruin. 

Sec. 24. All obstacles to happiness will prove, 
when scientifically dealt with, as the simplest of them 
have already been, but the very, and only, comprehen- 
sihle means whereby happiness could have been obtained ; 
and in proportion as obstacles are complicated, and 
therefore diflBcult to convert to means of happiness, will 
they prove conducive to it when, by a comhination of 
science^ of art, and of effort^ (of course proportionably 
com.plicated) they are converted to means ; and the only 
obstacle to human perfection on earth is universally, 
though unconsciously, conceded to be the lack of the high 
science of combining, and thus to the best advantage 
using, means which are naively confessed to exist ; as 
they most assuredly do, but in a latent, undeveloped, an- 
tagonistic state, exactly opposite their right and confess- 
edly possible one. Else, what insulting mockery it is to 
exhort us to be so perfect, that nothing short of the ima~ 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENT ATIYE . 51 

ginary author of our being, whom, we are told, will per- 
fect all, is held up as our type. Nothing short of the fall 
development, and perfectly co-operative G077ibination of 
all natui-al power can effect this; and could nature exist 
at all, if she was not, at bottom, harmonious ? 

But man excuses his laziness, and blinds himself to 
his own ignorance and imperfection, by accusing nature 
of being '' depraved" — a hoax, — a flunkey — an abortion ; 
" a fleeting show for man's illusion given." He creates 
out of his own incoherent, hotch-potch imagination, a 
being, the very reflex of himself magnified, whom he 
locates out of nature, and then, under the guise of rever- 
ence, insults to the last degree. He says to him, in efi'ect, 
if you did work " six days," ages, periods, or some things^ 
to make a " vale of tears" — a kennel in which to breed 
knaves and fools — tyrants and victims — humbugs and 
dupes — we, nevertheless are not so jolly green as to take 
you for the unmitigated dunce your performances seem- 
ingly proclaim you to be. As we 2ive formed after you^ 
don't you suppose we can see through you ? You can't 
come it over us, by a long shot ; you have over-acted in 
attempting to hide your manoeuvres ; you think to come 
the surprise on us ; and after you have done what you 
could to make us think we are dead, we are to be aston- 
ished by the discovery that we are still alive — we are 
expected to laugh and be laughed at for having been 
"scared for nothing," 

But you a'int half as " cute" as you think you are ; 
for in spite of all your attempts to keep dark, we are up 
to your tricks, spy out all your sly capers, and get the 
hang of your jokes before you get ready to crack them. 
But as those who are well bred (as we are bound to sup- 
pose you to have been, considering the long schooling 
you have had) always accommodate themselves, good 
humouredly, to whatever predicament their jokes hap- 
pen to bring them into, we hope you will excuse us for 
outwitting you; especially when we inform you that we 
shall thank and praise you every bit as heartily as we 
should have done, had your ruse been successful. 



62 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE* 

Since I have become accustomed to view the sensibly 
existent from its self-sustaining and self-su£Bcing stand- 
point, and to simultaneously associate mind and or- 
gans — action and that which acts ; and particularly when 
I consider the immensity of what exists even within our 
doubtless comparatively infinitesimal cognizance, and 
contemplate its self-action, from the action of celestial 
spheroids to that of ultimate atoms, I am instinctively^ 
for the instant, shocked at the irreverence and " blas- 
phemy" of those who dare pray to, or wag their tongues 
concerning the plans, schemes, and contrivances of 
"God." Would these daring egotists care for the opin- 
ions which might be entertained of them by beings so 
diminutive, both bodily and mentally, that one thousand 
millions (about the number of the earths inhabitants) of 
them could exist on an ultimate atom, and be as prodigal- 
ly wasteful of means, and consequently as miserable, as 
are the highest order of sentient beings on our speck of 
existence? Or will mankind deiv e thmJc before their 
" All-knowing Almighty," that my comparison is too 
severe on them ? 

Godists, to be at all logical, must associate the "Al- 
mighty" superfluousness whom they insult with their im- 
pertinent approval, with the motion of the molecules, of 
odours and substances so nasty that I always forbear to 
mention, or even allude to them, whenever I can refrain 
without sacrificing meaning highlj^ essential to be con- 
veyed. 

If even an ultimate atom of ever so disgusting an 
effluvia can move without the special aid of the great 
Scape Goat of man's egotism, ignorance, and mental lazi- 
ness, so, on the same principle, can the celestial Sphe- 
roids. 

Whatman dares to define to be "Almighty^" evidently 
becomes, as soon as named,subject to mere duration and 
space ; since ideas cannot go behind these, even in search 
of any thing either subjective or objective. 

If, in our Grammar schools, scholars were instructed 
to make Sijust distinction between nouns substantive and 



FCJJ^DAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 53 

nouns subjective, what an immensity of balderdash and 
insanity the world would be spared the infliction of. 

Seo. 25. But Supernaturalists have not quite cap'd 
the climax of absurdity. That feat has been reserved 
for those who are endeavoring to admire nature, and to 
reconcile themselves and others to her, whilst she is in 
that state of transition in which she is precisely as hide- 
ous as she is capable of becoming loveable. 

These " infidels," claim to be philosophers, on no bet- 
ter ground than their capability to doubt. As no volun- 
tary action can take place on the part of the victim of 
complete doubt, how can voluntary action occur in con- 
sequenoe of any degree of doubt? True, a man never 
voluntarily, alters his course, so long as he is perfectly 
satisfied that it is the right one ; but it is equally evident 
that he never can voluntarily alter his course for the 
hetter^ simply heeause he is satisfied that it is the wrong 
one ; man sanely alters his course, only because he is 
more or less convinced that a different course must be 
the right one or an approximation to it, and because 
he has or imagines he has, at least some idea of what 
that course is. 

Doubt — skepticism — constitute the most unfortunate 
predicament in ^which humanity, collectively or indivi- 
dually, can be placed. It is the or zero of knowledge 
and of human progress ; and it is lamentable to hear 
such authors as even Buckle, say — " they who do not feeL 
the darkness, will never look for the light." Well, how 
long, and how strongly must they who have no concep- 
tion of what light is, " feel the darkness," in order to 
make them " look for the light?" Again — "The doubt 
must intervene, before the investigation can begin.'^ 
Would it not be more intelligible to say — the need of 
something better must be felt, and at least the hope of 
its attainment be conceived, " before the investigation 
can begin ?" Admitting doubt does intervene ; it is but 
a misfortune to be removed instead of augmented ; since 
it might intervene to all eternity without suggesting ani/ 

5 



54: THE KELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

course of investigation. Doubt is essentially statical. In- 
spired by the perfection of doubt, a man would stand 
still, or act involuntarily — insanely. 

Again : — '^ Skepticism disturbs their lazy and com- 
placent minds — troubles theii: cherished superstitions — 
imposes the fatigue of inquiry — rouses sluggish under- 
standings to ask if things are as they are commonly sap- 
posed." Skepticism does none of these things ; because 
as we have just shown, it does but just nothing at 
all. 

Again : — ''The more we examine this great principle 
of skepticism, the more distinctly shall we see the im- 
mense part it has played in the progress of European 
civilization." The only thing which has played any useful 
part in European or any other civilization, is science ; 
• first in its embryonic, supernaturalistic/amfoe^;^ charac- 
ter ; and, gradually growing more and more developed, 
positive and effective. Civilization commenced in the 
supposed comprehension of every thing, through faith ; 
and will be completed, through the real comprehension 
of every thing necessary to be known, through science. 
Supernaturalism was the school teacher which had the 
charge of the infancy of science ; and had not that pri- 
mary teacher attempted to retain the scholar in the low- 
est class, after a higher class was required by improve- 
ment, the race of skeptics, or mere opposers of superna- 
turalism would never have had existence ; and civilized 
man, even in the perfect stage itself, would have looked 
back on his primary teachers in civilization, with the 
same affection with which he now remembers those who 
taught him his A. B. C. 

As to the "great principles of skepticism," John- 
son, quoting Dryden, thus defines them: — "Pretence, 
or profession of universal doubt;" and Webster calls 
them "the scheme of philosophy which denies the cer- 
tainty of any knowledge respecting the phenomena of 
natureP Skepticism is therefore evidently a shade 
less sensible than "supernaturalism" can be conceived 
to be. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AKGUMENTATIVE. 5 

Those original human beings, to whose virgin percep- 
tive faculties nature first introduced her phenomena, 
were the most perfect skeptics which have ever existed ; 
but entire skepticism ruled, or was practiced on even in 
their case, but barely long enough to be named, ere sii- 
pernaturalism, with its faintest glimmer of knowledge, 
came to the rescue. Skepticism but confuses man's ideas ; 
and persistence in it, were that possible, would finally 
nullify them. The falsest hypothesis possible is more 
scientific, organic^ and therefore more progressive, thaa 
skepticism. 

Sec. 26. Nations would indefinitely grovel in sav- 
ageism, unless spontaneous surplus production gave rise 
to a class of leaders released from the necessity of man- 
ual labor, and devoted to contemplation and study ; or 
where neither soil nor climate are thus favorable, civili- 
sation remains in abeyance, until introduced by mission- 
aries, foreign commerce, or conquest. 

The non-producing classes, by their superior skill 
even under the present loose social organization, do some- 
thing towards directing, combining, and economising the 
power of producers ; and from those who have leisure, 
of which the clergy certainly have the most, will event- 
ually arise two classes ; the one wholly devoted to scien- 
tific discovery, and the other to scientific combination, 
direction, and adjusting, and, in short, making the most 
of, the discoveries which the first class make, so as to 
economise, and render co-operative and in the highest 
degree efi'ective, the eff'orts of the operators — the great 
body of the people. 

Sec. 27. It matters little, perhaps nothing, in the 
long run, whether political power is usurped, inherited, 
or delegated. It cannot be unduly collected at any one 
point, without being unduly withdrawn from all other 
points in the connection. Power, unduly possessed, must 
be abused ; its very existence, or rather attempted exist- 
ence, out of the natural equilibrium, is an abuse ; it ere- 



56 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



ates disturbances comparable to those which altering the 
law of gravitation would produce. Not power, but its 
scientific development, combination, and application 
should be entrusted to the leaders of mankind. JEn 
j)dssantj power is of two kinds — positive and negative 
— the power of weakness and the power of strength ; 
and both can all iiit equally damage each other, as we 
shall show in the proper place. 

Sec. 28. The function of The Religion of Superna- 
turalism was altogether provisional; it was to partially 
civilize man ; to rough hew him, as it were ; teach Mm 
to he tattgftt ; and thus prepare him for the finishing 
which The Religion of Science is to give him. 

Except sucking, nothing is so purely natural to the 
human animal as the religion of mystery, or supernatu- 
ralism. The church of the incomprehensible was the 
only possible first head of collective man — that continu- 
ous being, who, through the whole course of ages, 
will live ; and, up to the perfection point, constantly 
learn. 

The infancy of this great collective being, like that 
of the individuals of which it is composed, was charac- 
terized by that feebleness of intellect, which, utterly un- 
able to grapple with scientific conceptions, has to be 
amused and pacified with those simple puerilities which 
address themselves to the wild and incoherent imagina- 
tion — the forerunner of the understanding. 

The first teachings of the church were therefore na- 
turally ^' supernaturalP But in proportion as phenom- 
ena become understood, the imagination becomes dis- 
placed by, or rather transformed into, the understanding ; 
as the tender and feeble infant, by the use of more solid 
nourishment, becomes lost in the man or woman ; and 
the age of science succeeds that of superstition. When 
the knowledge of phenomena shall penetrate the most 
infinitesimal and complicated in nature — intellectuality— 
when all nature is fully developed, her laws harmonious- 
ly connected, and her force combined for man ; when the 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMEN TATIYE. 57 

highest law, that of the harmonious action of scientifi- 
cally organized humanity and all else in the connection, 
shall be understood ; when duty and virtue shall be set 
aside, and mutual guarantyism shall be dictated by en- 
lightened selfishness itself; when man truly understands 
his interests and goes scientifically to work to promote 
them, leaving " ouglit to^'^ wholly out of the question, 
the age of human perfection will have been ushered 
in. 

Seo. 29. Social and intellectual phenomena, equally 
with those more palpable, are subordinate to physical 
and phj^siological laws ; the former therefore, should be 
as the latter are, wholly matter of scientific research. 
But have any of our statute " laws" been predicated on 
Science? What science does our legislature acquire 
through the ballot box except that of chicanery ? If as- 
tronomers had studied popularism as exclusively as do 
legislators, the World would still have been the grand 
center of all ; and the study of popularism is as much 
more mischievous in sociology, than elsewhere, as all sci- 
ence is more important than any of its branches. 

Sec. 30. Man inherits imagination, but has to ac- 
quire understanding. The more advanced society be- 
comes, the more the understanding robs the wild and in- 
coherent imagination of its sway, and in the same ratio 
do chimeras yield to realities. Until man understands 
that there is regularity connected with phenomena and 
that nature is not inert, its motion being spontaneous and 
inseparable from itself, he perforce attributes natural ac- 
tion to arbitrary design ; and the impressions of man's 
primitive folly are so indelible, because, at the time they 
were made, there was no opposition — no alternative — 
nothing to break their force. Man is therefore immensely 
more satisfied of the truth of those impressions which he 
has inherited, than of the truth of those which he has 
subsequently acquired. He rarely becomes aware of the 
falsity which encrusts what he incoherentlv imagines he 



58 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

feels to be true, but until mathematical certainty removes 
all doubt, he always has some lingering suspicious res- 
pecting truths he has only learned to be such. 

Sec 31. In proportion as man understands phen- 
omena, they become, or, though combinations, and adjust- 
ings of discovered laws will become, his friends instead of 
his enemies. He confides more and more in the might 
which he faster and faster acquires, as armies take more 
and more courage tlie more victories they gain, and he 
proportionably loses the superstition incidental to consci- 
ous weakness. Devotion has greatly diminished, since 
lightning has been under the controll of iron rods, since 
eclipses have been calculated, and since vaccination has 
disappointed the vengeance of ofiended Deity. 

Sec. 32. In that part of the world where climate, 
soil, general aspects of nature, and the disposition of the 
people w-ere most favorable to despotism, the now para- 
mount religion in civilized countries, or rather those su- 
perstitions of which it is an embodiment, arose. There- 
fore, in those countries, superstitions difi*erent in little 
else than in name, from the one with which they have 
furnished Western Europe and the United States, still 
hold sway ; whilst the transplanted one has lost nearly 
all its vitality, and now mainly depends, for such show 
of life as it still keeps up, on corruption, hypocrisy, and 
the sincerity of those whose intellects it has kept down 
to the Asiatic standard — scarcely distinguishable from 
habit, or even instinct. To keep this superstition alive 
where it was not indiginous, it was the practice during 
the Middle Ages, constantly to draw fresh life to it from 
the original fountain, by means of pilgrimages ; nor has 
the method yet been wholly abandoned. But 'tis all in 
vain. The religion which will consist in the practical 
value of all science will gradually, and ere long very sud- 
denly, displace every vestige of supernaturalistic religion 
throughout Western Europe and the United States ; and 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 59 

it will finally extend its conquests to those benighted 
regions whose mystical penumbra has so long bewild- 
ered us. 

It is nothing against this prophecy, that church build- 
ing is still going on at a great rate and that what passes 
for religion wields such enormous sums of money. The 
lion roars loudest and to ordinary observers exhibits 
the greatest show of life after he has received his death 
wound. And all rotten concerns make the greatest show 
of business just before they finally collapse. The cur- 
rent religion has in reality, though not, of course, in ap- 
pearance, altogether abandoned its trust in supernatura. 
power, (in which trust, all it ever had of real life con- 
sisted) and clings with a death-grasp, which fully shows 
its desperate condition, to money, and to the lingering 
prejudices of the least thinking portion of mankind. Su- 
pernatural religion now lacks the active faith which once 
peopled deserts with hermits and cloisters with peni- 
tents of the highest rank. It can no longer boast of its 
Constantines, Alfreds, Charles Fifths, and Ferdinands 
and Isabellas. Its sun has all but set forever, and it is be- 
cause it is so low in the horizon, that it so dazzles the 
eyes of ordinary beholders. All others see the vacant 
height from whence it has fallen, and foresee the dark 
abyss to which it is sinking. A petition signed by some 
three thousand clergymen of the now first class, vras, on 
a memorable occasion, treated more scornfully, and that 
too, by mere demagogues, than the mightiest monarch of 
the Middle ages would have dared or cared to have 
treated a petition of the raggedest and humblest 
Monks. 

Sec. 33. " Do you not thank the Almighty Being 
who gives you all the good you enjoy ?" asks the en- 
thusiast. " If I supposed there existed such a Being^'^ I 
reply, '' I should not dare thus upbraid him — thus irri- 
tate his pugnacious organs" — (for mind, be it remem- 
bered, is inseparable from subjective and objective or- 
gans) "Upbraid him, how ?" '^ Why, in the most keen 



60 THE EELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

and insulting manner possible. Would not this supposed 
Almighty Intelligence be conscious that if he sometimes 
did us good, he oftener, and of course wantonly did us 
evil ? And would not our praises make him feel as did 
the wicked viceroy, whose king sent an ambassador to 
thank him for the righteous manner in which he execu- 
ted his trust ? Again ; to thank an Almighty Being for 
any thing — to call him good — is to constitute our little, 
comparatively nothing selves the judges of his actions ; 
and if he noticed us at all, it would appropriately be in 
the shape of a " dam your impudence." 

The reader will please take notice that in this and 
every previous and subsequent instance, if I have spoken 
or shall speak disrespectfully of an '^ Almighty Being," 
I mean a bogus one ; one who stands confessedly the fac 
simile except in magnitude, of man in a remote and ne- 
cessarily barbarous age; and who not only did not lack, 
as such boguses do now, the all but entire faith of the 
more intelligent portion of mankind, but was even im- 
mensely more popular than any almighty incomprehen- 
sible unnecessary fifth wheel of a coach now is. For I 
wish to keep matters on such a footing that if ever Al- 
mighty Incomprehensibility and I meet, he will say : — 
''Friend, you have never either slandered or insulted me- 
Do whatever you please, as long as you please ; since I 
know you cannot voluntarily do any harm ; and when you 
get tired of repeating all the varieties of which your five- 
sense nature will admit, I will permit you to sleep to 
wake no more." 

Sec. 34. Where there is the least spark of supersti- 
tion, disease strengthens it ; and sudden danger raises it 
to a flame. This is often fearfully exemplified in cases of 
disasters at sea. A ship springs aleak. Superstitious 
terror brings most on board to their knees, and all go to 
the bottom of the ocean, when, had they worked instead 
of praying, and trusted to themselves instead of to an in- 
comprehensible " Almighty," who never interferes in 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 



61 



their behalf, the ship would have been lightened, or 
the leak staunched, and all would have been saved. 

Sec. 35. Mental disease — superstition — is intimate- 
^ly connected with bodily disease. The sick chamber is 
where superstition confessedly obtains its greatest victo- 
ries. From the most unhealthy portions of the globe, 
the healthiest inherited both their prevailing superstitions 
and their worst diseases. Europe and consequently the 
United States, have to thank "- the Land of the East" for 
the Cholera, Small Pox, Plague, and immeasurably 
worse than all, bogus religion, and the Protestantism, 
Oppositionism, morality, virtue; in short, sociological 
humbug founded thereon. 

Sec. 36. Collective, like individual man, has birth, 
infancy, youth, and well have maturity. Then, the par- 
allel will cease ; or, if it extends to old age, or second 
childhood, still, the period of the maturity of collective 
man will be coeval with the existence, in its correspond- 
ing condition, of our Solar System of which the most 
infinitesimal particle of every individual is a connected 
portion. 

The type of the satisfaction which will guarantee the 
stability of perfected collective man, is the equilihriurrh 
which the celestial spheroids have found or attained to, 
and which guarantees their stability ; a stability which 
is perfect, but not absolute. For the celestial spheroids 
are undergoing the double synthetical and [analytical 
motion of formation and dissolution, though in a manner as 
gentle as is the motion of transformation between them and 
universal ether j and when man attains to the satisfaction 
of his nature to which he is tending he, collectively^ will 
be as harmoniously and permanently equilibriated as is 
the Solar System ; and individually^ he will undergo the 
double synthetical and analytical motion of formation 
and dissolution without violence^ and consequently with- 
out evil ; analogously as the celestial spheroids and the 



62 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

aniversal ether in which they swim interchange condi- 
tions. But this will be fully explained in its proper place 
— in the last division of this work. 

Sec. 37. The infancy of collective man, necessitated • 
the guardianship of prophets ; and the period of collec- 
tive man's intellectual youth required Popes, as infallible 
as the great Supernatural one whose representatives they 
claimed to be. Simultaneous with Popes, the tutorship, 
in active affairs, (religion and government being always 
social statics and dynamics) of kings, invested with soi- 
disant divine, and therefore arbitrary power, was neces- 
sary. Supernaturalism, thus systematized, necessarily 
remained, in all but permanency, for ages. Between this 
first and all but fixed regime of Supernaturalism, and 
the final and fixed regime of positivism, there lies an 
ocean of seeming anarchy or transition (there is, we must 
remember, no such thing as absolute anarchy, the mode 
in which any thing exists being its law, at least ^ro tem^ 
the boisterous waves of which will dash back, wrecked, 
to the shore whence they started, every ship which sails, 
till one can be built of timber sound enough to avoid the 
dry rot of morality and virtue, and projected on a suffi- 
ciently magnificient scale to accommodate all manhindl 
and strong enough, not only to defy the winds of dema- 
gogocracy, protestantism, and infidelity, but whose opti- 
cians have brought their art to such perfection as to ena- 
ble the pilots to discern the positive shore, and steer safely 
thither. 

Sec. 38. Opinionism is tolerable, as a social basis, 
only during the transition period which must inevitcvbly 
intervene between the age of mystery and the age of 
certainty ; and the Protestant clergy are specially 
chargeable with the " crime" in which all others are now 
mainly included, of unnecessarily prolonging that period, 
and its consequent anarchy and misery. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTAHYE. 63 

Sec. 39. As the dbsolittely statical can have no con- 
ceivable existence, religion, to be true, must keep pace 
with, and thus be always true to, man ; must be constant- 
ly what it was at first — man's highest conception. JSoth- 
ing can be more false than attempting to lead man back- 
ward, or than attempting to induce him to remain intel- 
lectually stationary ; attempting to keep all '' as it was in 
the beginning." When the present religion was true to 
man, that is as true as he could conceive of, it was at the 
head\ now, it is so false that it has sunk at least as 
low as the 'belly ; all of it which has any thing to do 
with the head, can be estimated in dollars and cents as 
easily as can cotton, tobacco, codfish, or any other mer- 
chandize. Some religious houses or shops trade oflT 
$5000 worth of what now passes for religion annually ; 
some not more than $500;— but the yearly cost of sup- 
plying the article in the United States is not less than 
$100,000,000 

So sure as man is a progressive being, religion, to con- 
tinue religion, must be also progressive ; as a tree, to 
continue such, must grow. Stopping the growth of a 
tree, when it was but a twig, would reduce it first to a 
dead stick, and then to utter decay ; would annihilate it 
as a tree. Thus religion owes all its odium to its self 
styled ministers, who, lazily mistaking its very nature, 
cramp it all but to death, and thus reduce it to protest- 
antish and even opinionistic untenacity. 

Sec. iO. Could the soi disant friends of religion y^ZZy 
succeed, man would be actually reduced to what he in 
effect^ is — a savage, a very cannibal. Yes; man every 
where substantially eats man ; and the diflference be- 
tween theParisian,Londoner, New-Yorker, and the Fee- 
gee Islander is a mere matter of taste and convenience. 
The civilizee refrains from slaughtering and eating men 
directly^ only because slaughtering them by a slower and 
cruder process costs less pains to the slaughterer, and 
procures him viands, the taste of which, suits his palate 
better than would human flesh ; and tanned human 



64 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

skins would make but poor clothing, compared to that 
which is as bad as manufactured from human sinews, 
heart strings, and lung tissues, in the sewing girl's garret, 
and in the fetid atmosphere of altogether unnecessarily- 
murderous work-shops. 

Sec. 41. So long as religion is a fossil, it will be only 
fit for mummies ; and it will have to depend, for support, 
on those whose understandings, apart from their special 
avocations, are but a bundle of prejudices and habits — 
whose reason is scarcely above instinct ; and on money, 
corruption, hypocrisy, fraud, and lying. Surely human 
nature cannot be. or become so degraded, that a system 
reduced to the necessity of being supported by such 
means, can be indefinitely kept up. The contempt for 
each other, and for themselves, of the continuators of 
such a system, must eventually become intolerable. Cler- 
gymen, your glory, as conjurors, has departed forever. 
If you have even the virtue shame left ; nay, if 
even the feeling of selfishness is not stone-blind within 
you, adopt the Religion of Science, and be again worth- 
ily at the head of mankind — of mankind redeemed 
— of mankind freed from the crushing tyranny of the 
mystery bewildered majority, and its most abominable 
ministers, now your masters — demagogues. 

Sec. 42. As there exists nothing ultranatural, man 
never has, in reality, entertained other than natural ideas. 
Yet he has had, and, until they are gratified always will 
have, longings for perfection, and consequently some 
glimmering ideas of it. These ideas have been errone- 
ous and faint, or just and clear, in accordance with the 
point of view from whence they were entertained. The 
savage's idea of perfection consists in incoherent visions 
of hunting grounds, well stocked with game, where he 
will be free from dangers peculiar to savage life. The 
barbarian's idea of perfection is a kingdom, whose mon- 
arch is so powerful as to cut ofi" all hopes of successful 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 65 

rebellion, and whose subjects are fed'with "angel's food," 
or " heavenly manna," which excludes the idea of excre- 
ments, and clothed in " robes of white," made of celestial 
satin and sewed with divine thread and needles, which 
exclude the idea of silk worms, or of Lowell or Sheffield 
factories ; and whose organs of generation if they are 
allowed to carry them along, are useless ; as, in fact, 
are all their other organs, except their eyes and tongues, 
as the have nothing to do but to behold and praise their 
sovereign, " day and night." 

Sec. 43. The civilizee or opinionist, begins to loose 
faith in things altogether impervious to the senses, in 
consequence of commenceing to have conceptions of 
perfection, or at least improvement on earth ; which im- 
provement he, however, unfortunately imagines to be ob- 
tainable by means of substituting the government of the 
mystery-bewildered people through their delegates, (or 
those who fraudulently manage to get accepted for such) 
forthat of Grand Lamas, Grand Yiziers, Popes, Emperors, 
and Kings. The experiment of elective franchise result- 
ing in nothing better than the utterly corrupt and worse 
than useless despotism of the vilest of mankind — dem- 
agogues — the scum of humanity, which agitation brings 
to the surface, — the representatives of all the false notions 
which false education had entailed on the majority — but 
one other source from whence to look for any encour- 
agement, remains — The Government of Science. 

The majorty, in popular government, is the standing 
army which keeps the minority in subjection. The Pres- 
ident is only the cats-paw, or distributor of spoils to the 
oligarchy which nominates him, and to their abettors, 
who manage and direct the process by which the people 
are deluded into the idea that they elect. 

Democracy asserts the right of the majority to govern; 
as though the majority had not always constituted the 
power through which mankind have been domineered 
over. Mere brute force always has been, and always will 
be the dependance of those who either usurp power, or 

6 



66 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

fraudulently obtain it ; and folly or knavery, or a com- 
pound of both, will always direct that power till the reins 
of government fall into the hands of those who under- 
stand The Religion and Government of Science, and mea 
are taught Jiow to be free, instead of being instigated to 
kill each other in order to acquire liberty. 

Popular sovereignity is despotism so complete, that a 
few of the most idle and depraved among qwqw primary 
electioneer ers are more absolute than was ever the most 
divinely commissioned college of theocrats ; the only al- 
ternative to their sway being fresh spoliation by another 
gang exactly similar except in being unsated. 

The popular despots whose puppet the President is, 
and whose tools and victims the people are, are too arro- 
gant to make even the miserable apology of right divine 
or even right of birth. Theirs, alone, is unblushing, pure- 
ly arbitrary, right. Democracy is the crisis stage of that 
most dreadful political disease — despotism — the acme of 
\)ii2X false selfishness which has no radius. Tr%ie selfish- 
ness is that, the periphery of whose radius includes all 
mankind — which blesses in being blessed. 

The problem now up, for solution^ is, to find a gov- 
ernment for the collective human body, which like that 
of the individual body — the nerves and brain — shall be 
spontaneously created; shall really depend, for support, 
on the understanding approval of the whole people ; and 
which shall be constituted by men of the most scientific 
attainments and enlarged views; of course, with their 
whole time to devote to their high calling, and with the 
results of all discovered science, and with ah ava lable 
means for constantly increasing science at their command ; 
instead of being ''got up" at primary elections by the 
nose leaders of the ultranaturalisticaUy bamboozled ma- 
jority, and the vitiated rabble. 

The even now common sense of the people would 
lead them to consider themselves grossly insulted and 
trifled with, were they called upon to decide, by bollot- 
ing, questions in astronomy, geolog)^, anatomy, chemis- 
try, or any of the hraiiches of acknowledged science. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARajMENTATIVE. 67 

Yet they consider it a sacred right, to be hoaxed into bal- 
loting on the question which involves all science present 
or to come — the question of human government — the 
question of discovering, and putting into practical oper- 
ation the highest law — that of harmonious, collective, and 
so scientifically combine us to be the most advantageous 
which can be desired, human and other action. In fiae, 
of discovering how the individuals composing humanity 
can be so adjusted to each other, and to the great w^hole 
in their connection, that means shall prove adequate to 
required ends, and man's coherent and well defined ^Q- 
sires shall prove to be but the measure of his acqui- 
sitions. 

Sec. 44. Means, when developed, will be found to 
have been in exact proportion to ends. Wants, are nature's 
guaranty that if the means for their supply are not man- 
ifest, they are latent, and forthcoming ; else nature would 
be that impossible half thing, on absolute simple ; a one- 
sided affair ; a positive without a negative ; a plate too 
thin to have more than one surface. 

Creation is development. What has not been com- 
pletely developed, is only undergoing the process of cre- 
ation ; and neither the earth nor man, are exceptions to 
the rule ; popular, and even philosophic folly to the con- 
trary, notwithstanding. 

Countless billions of ages since, according to geology, 
the volcano and hurricane breeding mass of warring ele- 
ments to which the name Earth is affixed, commenced 
from the simplest condition in which materiality can ex- 
ist, that series of developments which will . end in crea- 
tion, when man, nature's prospective head, scarcely yet 
rough sketched — little more than confusion on confusiori 
heaped — is fully himself, and, through science, revises^ 
perfects, and in short finishes, all with which he is ever 
so remotely or infinitesimally, connected. 

When nature is complete, from Physics to Sociology 
inclusive, she will consist of two well adjusted halves — > 
demand and supply. Now, little more than demand ex- 



68 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

ists ; as physical nature loudly and destructively, and hu- 
man nature most painfully, attest. 

As phenomena become numerous and complicated, 
the means for their solution become proportionably nu- 
merous and, when used, effective. But the obstacles to 
happiness which complications or rather man's ignorance 
in the premises temporarily present, though instantly felt, 
necessarily require time and effort for their removal ; 
else, all would be supernatural. As nothing in nature 
can be absolutely stationary, or indifferent, means must 
either be used or abused ; and abuses, or neglect in any 
department, must be productive of evil, in the exact ra- 
tio in which uses would have been productive of good. 
Hence religion — a bond of union — which, if scientifically 
used, would have produced Heaven, has by being abus- 
ed, produced Hell on Earth. 

Stationary religion must necessarily be dead and in- 
operative, except detrimentally, like the world's present 
religion ; since the double movement of absorption and 
exhalation is as necessary to be kept up in intellectuality 
as in the vegetable or animal economy; though motion 
may be suspended longer in the vegetable than in the ani- 
mal economy, and longer in the intellectual than in the 
vegetable economy, without fatal consequences. 

Sec. 46. If nature was not elaborating a perfection 
which she will attain, her energy must have given out 
long since. The supernaturalists God fills, as it were, 
the vaccuum out of which development is constantly 
crowding him. He is development roughly preconceiv- 
ed — faintly outlined. He will cease, like the provisional 
wooden arch which the stone mason uses, when develop- 
ment is perfected. The immaterial, incomprehensible 
" God" simply marks or indicates the vacuum which de- 
velopment has not yet filled ; and sceptics might more 
scientifically attempt to annihiliate any smaller vacuum 
without filling it, than that, the magnitude of which, is 
as immense as is vmnt. 

But if there is no God swpcrior to existence, how come 
existence ? Before I can rationallv consider, or anv one 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AEGUMENTATIVE. 69 

rationally ask that question, we must penetrate at least 
in thought^ heyond existence — ieyo7id space and duration 
even. But first, hear the philosophic Schelling : — " Of 
actual creation — of origin — the beginning of existence 
from non-existence, we have no experience, and can there- 
fore form no conception. Nature is not an inert mass ; 
and to him who can comprehend her vast sublimity, she 
reveals herself as the creative power of the Universe." 
Never doubt that perfection, now latent in nature, is 
quitting that condition with rapidly increasing speed, and 
will become manifest with amazing suddenness. In the 
mean time, man will continue to put out his eyes- — the 
eyes of his understanding — in the delusive hope of gra- 
tifying his curiosity to see what is behind them ; to at- 
tempt to penetrate beyond actual existence, and from 
nothing nowhere, try to scan everything everywhere ; 
to strive to sate a curiosity so much worse than barren, 
that its gratification, could that be possible, would prove 
the most woful disappointment which poor thoughtless 
man could plunge himself into. 

The reason why existence is so inigmatical is that its 
phenomena are at first (inevitably) crowded on man 
all at once, instead of in detail. From this perplexity, 
the only possible issue primarily was that provisionalism 
of the knowable — that primary cellular tissue of science 
— supernaturalism — which will be eliminated as man gra- 
dually comes to view existence as an inevitability — to 
justly conceive of agent and act. Here we see, in the 
words of Comte, that " the Positive Philosophy never 
destroys a doctrine without instantly substituting a con- 
viction, adequate to the needs of our human nature ;" 
that " imperfection is in our knowledge alone," that our 
intellectual system cannot be renovated till the sciences 
are studied in their proper order," that true religion will 
be The Science of Sciences; 

Sec. 46. As soon as the veritable highest law — the 
true Catholic religion — the Science of Sciences — is con- 
ceived of by the leaders of mankind, how to be free, good, 



YO THE RELIGION OF SCIENOE. 

and happy will be the whole religious, social and moral 
question ; and patriotism, virtue, self denying morality 
—in a word^ duties^ will vanish as did alchemy before 
chemistiy, and charms and incantation before medical 
science. Man will do right in preference to WTong when 
he is sensible it is for his advantage; and man's leaders 
will soon be sensible of this, and lead accordingly. Mo 
rality and duty have been harped upon from time imme- 
morial ; and without making the least perceptible pro- 
gress. The great moral law of Confucius, since attribu- 
ted to the mythical Christ, to " do to others as you would 
have others do to yon," is confessedly the height of " duty;" 
yet there never was even a savage, of common sense, who 
was ignorant of the fact that, to he able to carry out that 
maxim, was desirable. But simply to preach to man 
what he ought to do^ is as senseless, to say the least, as it 
would be to preach the duty of remedying the defect in 
the Atlantic cable ; and equally useless, as history fully 
attests. Woe to that people whose rulers are governed 
by a sense of duty. Far better be under the dominion 
of the most unprincipled — such might be bribed, to do 
right \ but nothing can prevent "duty bound" fools from 
" paving Hell with their good intentions" to the extent 
of their power. Duty was parent to the Inquisition, and 
morality is the very l3ed of Procrastes. Give us self-in- 
terest for a motive, and a broad, enlightened, and full 
view of what it is. 

" Morality is the basis of society ; if man is a mere 
mass of matter, there is in reality neither vice nor virtue, 
and of course morality is a mere sham ;" exultingly 
remarks that most able of Christianism's advocates — 
Chateaubriand. 

True, most emphatically true ; let Christianism have 
all the praise of all the good its virtuous and vicious dis- 
tinctions have ever produced. Neither virtue, vice, nor 
morality will have any thing to do in the social structure 
when science becomes master builder ; for man is " a mere 
mass of matter," and nothing else ; though his is the most 
refined condition of matter, or rather is to be, and that^ 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE 71 

too, as soon as those clogs — virtue, vice, and morality are 
as far removed from man as they are from clocks, pow- 
er looms, and steam engines. What should we think of 
the artizan who should hreak or hend the spindles of a 
spinning jenny in order io force them to work truly — 
justly — who should talk about the honest, and virtuous or 
dishonest and vicious action of machinery ? Yet just such 
fools are our legislators and moralists. 

Sec. 47. Of all the vanities, that of setting up for 
an original thinker is one of the most ridiculous, and one 
of the most mischievous to its entertainer. That a thought 
could wholly be originated by any one, is a notion so ab- 
surd, that I can scarcely see how one capable of retain- 
ing an impression long enough to pen it down, could ever 
have entertained it. 

He who is original enough to imagine himself an ori- 
ginal thinker, avoids reading or studying any thing on 
the subject which he intends to speak or write about, lest 
his style should indicate that his ideas were borrowed. 
He is unconscious of the fact that all his ideas are sug- 
gested by something objective to his half of the mental 
faculties, equally whether such objectivity consists in the 
ideas of others or in the coarsest externality. The thoughts 
herein expressed were penned down as externality sug- 
gested them. Not one of them were absolutely origina- 
ted or even called up by the writer. 

The entire savage, comes nearest to an original thinker, 
and his thoughts are worth very little to any one but 
himself. The profoundest thinker (so to speak in order 
to avoid repeated circumlocution) is likely to be he who 
is capable of making the most of the thoughts of all pre- 
vious thinkers — of arranging all former great ideas into 
a basis from whence to commence his own mental oper- 
ations. 

We consciously or unconsciously^ avail ourselves of the 
mental labors of those who have preceded us. Could we 
avoid doing so, we should of course have to labor unne- 
cessarily, up to the point where previous mental laborers 



72 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

left off; and unless we were miraGulously "smart," we 
should in order to reach it, have to be miraculously 
old ; as old, even, as the human race. 

Sec. 48. Nature necessarily originated man in that 
all but utter ignorance, which inevitably enslaved him, 
not only to every misery, but to every " sin," except the 
deadly one of perpetual indecision ; that impossible depth 
in folly w^hich those who glory in the name of infidel are 
striving so hard to bring themselves and their fellow men 
into. Imagining, however incoherently and unreally, 
every thing to be produced from nothing, by an Almighty 
incomprehensiblity, neither something nor nothing, was 
' the lowest plane in absurdity on which man has ever 
been able to rest ; was that first and consequently great- 
est of possible actual follies or sins, which has subjected 
him to the greatest of endurable miseries ; which has 
doomed him to run the gauntlet through savageism, ab- 
solutism, aristocracy, and demagogocracy. But to remain 
in a condition of utter skepticism, is a feat of folly 
which mankind have never been able to perform. 

Supernaturalism has always been in alliance with 
man's passions ; and never more so than when pretending 
to be at war with them ; and its success surely ought to 
suggest its policy to all reformers who profess even com- 
mon sense. Its policy has been simply to shape the 
human — the subjective part of the organs of mental ac- 
tion — to its liking whilst such organs were in a plastic and 
shapeable condition. Then, reformers, is your time, 
(and your only time) to shape those organs riglit, and 
prevent them from being hopelessly maimed, or outra- 
geously distorted. 

Sec. 49. Until man learns how to obtain what he 
naturally desires — perfection or the fulfillment of his 
whole being — in, and through nature, he will persist in 
seeking his " beings end and aim" out of nature. Ultra- 
naturalism is but the effect of undeveloped naturalism. 
As man's supposed longing for heavenly, spiritual, eter 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 73 

nal joys, is really but his impatience to be satisfied with 
sensuous, earthly delights, inerely opposing him — even 
convincing him that he is deluded — is waring on his af- 
fections, fighting against his passions, and attacking nature 
in her strongest fortress ; nay, at an absolutely invulner- 
able point, as uniform defeat or failure has sufficiently 
proved. 

Sec. 60. After man relinquishes all hopes of free- 
dom, goodness, and happiness in a supernatural world, 
and becomes an "infidel," he can't so. suddenly forsake 
his old habits, but that he retains the most mischievous 
of them. He strives to obtain, on Earth, some show of 
what he before expected in Heaven, by means of his old 
fashioned egotistic, isolated, self-reformation. But though 
the crowds who people a supernatural hell, form no im- 
pediment to the course of the earthly individual who, 
sincerely, and with a " single eye to his own calling and 
election," is spiritually journeying to a supernatural hea- 
ven, the isolated, egotistic, self-reformer in earthly afiairs, 
finds his progress all but completely blocked at the first 
step, by his competitors, who, helter-skelter, crowd the 
earthly hell which good intention, devoid of system, cre- 
ates ; finds that, '^ when he would do good" " on his own 
hook," he comes into instant preventive collision with 
others who would do so too, to the best of their individual 
abilities. Thus honesty and good intention, of them- 
selves, mutually create the very evil considered insur- 
mountable. 

Still, individual persistence in the cause of right, 
however vain, demonstrates the existence of a force, am- 
ple to ensure success, when liberated, developed, exer- 
cised in concert, and in accordance with the high law of 
scientifically combined human action. 

Sec. 51. Religion is essentially a universal, or ca- 
tholic uniting tie — that which must vitally concern all. 
Religion has thus far been but the average understand- 
ing of mankind. The religion of primitive, perfectly 



74 THE EELiaiON OF SCIENCE. 

ignorant man, must, therefore, have been the falsest pos- 
sible. Religion, when fully revealed, will be found to have 
had three general stages. The first, perfect in ignorance 
and sincerity, and strongly characterized by simple good 
intention — the credulous stage. The second, (the present) 
destitute of the most essential characteristic of religion 
itself; its sole cohesiveness consisting in an agreement to 
disagree. It is the mutual bantling of popular folly, and 
the " smart" hypocrisy and corruption which unorgan- 
ized, unconnected, fractional science engenders. Its fruit 
is a plentiful crop of cant, humbug, clap-trap, and skep- 
ticism—the opinionistic stage— reason's saturnalia— folly' s 
carnival. The third, and final stage will be The Religion 
of Scince — the highest, instead of only the average wis- 
dom of mankind — the stage of certainty or positivism — • 
the human order which will be as lasting as its type — 
the order of the celestial spheroids. 

Sec. 52. Reader excuse me for repeating, from eve- 
ry possible dififerent point of view, not only the substance 
of the last paragraph, but also: — ^That man \s> pTacticaUy 
connected ; and must be either harmoniously or antogon- 
istically, " for better or for worse" so, not only with his 
kind, but with all of nature, or existence, about which 
he can hiow any thing ; and it will require The Religion 
of Science, to determine the law of the harmony of that 
connection. All attempts at isolation, or absolute inde- 
pendence — opinionistic government, with reason for a 
religion or basis — demagogocracy — are as vain as are 
attempts at undue consolidation ; and are so much more 
mischievous, that they always end in being relinquished, 
after all the disturbance and misery they cause, for 
the very extreme of the evil they rebelled against and 
sought to avoid. 

Facts, truths, and all power, both human and other, 
must be scientifically and harmoniously combined. And 
until science, from base to apex — from physics to sociol- 
ogy — is a harmoniously connected whole — a religious 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AEGUMEN rATIYE. 75 

encjclopgedia — and the basis of human law and gov- 
ernment, man can never be either free or happy. 

For man's perfect freedom must consist in the satis- 
factory accordance of his acts, not only with those of his 
fellows, but with the action of all with which he is con- 
nected, even in thought ; as the freedom of machinery 
consists in the avoidance of all friction except (if it can 
be called such) tlie friction on which its power to act at 
all depends — that caused by gravitation. And absolutely 
isolated, or individual action, isolated goodness, isolated 
" virtue,'' isolated " vice," isolated happiness, isolated 
misery, isolated slavery, and isolated freedom, are impos- 
sibilities. 

None are so base as to hate freedom ; though most 
people are so blind as to attempt to monopolize it. But 
liberty cannot be hoarded up for private use. It must 
be free as air, or cease to be. Seclude it, and it turns to 
despotism. Constrain it, and it dies. 

Bat the most stubborn advococates of self-reformation 
— the most vindictive sticklers for a revengefu Idistinction 
being kept up between virtue and vice, are compelled to 
admit that there are some things, which no amount of 
virtue power can accomplish. To illustrate: — all the 
virtue, honesty and sincerity in the world, concentrated 
in one man, could not enable him to rush through a brick 
wall ten feet thick, even to prevent his wife or daughter 
from committing the greatest of possible " crimes" which 
a woman can perpetrate against the false religion, sham 
law and bogus morality now current. We might cite 
several other '• virtuous" actions which, we doubt not, 
the most obtuse virtuosos would admit to be impossible 
of performance. In fact, I believe none of them insist 
on an individual doing more than to persist, even to 
death, in the attempt to practice " virtue" isolatedly. 
But singly persisting in the practice of " virtue," to the 
extent of suftering more in one's own person than de- 
sisting would cause another to suffer, appears to me to 
be outvirtueing virtue, at least so far as the intrinsic va- 
lue of virtue is concerned, even if, as is rarely the case, 



76 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

the virtue in question happens to have any sensible vir- 
tue in it .Why cannot man's leaders see that to be good, 
people omist simply know how ; and that to wish to do 
evil is but evidence of insanity ? 

With respect to the main "virtue'^: — If conjugal 
partnerships are not mutually satisfactory, both parties 
will, in their imaginations, during the act of cohabitation, 
substitute others ; and thus, not only commit moral adul- 
tery, but damage their constitutions almost as much aa 
they would by downright masturbation. Does prom- 
iscuity even now, do worse than this, either morally or 
physically ? 

There is nothing which both physical and intellectual 
nature so abominates as constrained love. Murderers, 
thieves, and " villians" of every kind, together with most 
of the diseases peculiar to the human animal, are nuclear 
ted by constrained love. 

Horses, cattle, grains, fruits, and vegetables, are sci- 
entifically provided with the means of icing good. Does 
man consider himself of less consequence ? Or does he 
think himself capable of being good without means — 
nay, in spite of all the obstacles which all nature abused 
can oppose ? Or has not that experiment been tried quite 
long enough ? 

When husbands or wives poison each other, or men 
commit rapes on children, ''hang them," says society; '' 'tis 
expedient." But I tell you, society, that these " crimes'' 
and all others, are all but wholly yours ; and whether 
you believe it, or not, I defy you to read the record of 
" crime" any day, and feel and think that your hanging 
and imprisoning expedients are not entire failures. 

But without entering into any argument, as to whe- 
ther a man cannot refrain from drunkenness, from look- 
ing on a beautiful woman with adulterous or fornicative 
eyes, or from any or all other " vices," easier than he can 
walk through a brick wall ten feet thick., I will simply 
ask : — has not individual " virtue" and goodness — isola- 
ted self-reformation — been preached from time immemo- 
rial ? and has not its enforcement been attempted by in- 



FITNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIYE. 77 

flicting the most horrid temporal, and by threatening in- 
conceivably horrid eternal cruelties ? And if we except 
what of reformation in the connection can be clearly 
traced to even fragmentary science, is the world now 
any more ^^ vivtuous^^ than it ever was? And has the 
example and preaching of him in whom, the great ma- 
jority of the " virtnoas," and nearly all the " mcious^^ 
claim, was concentrated all the " virtue of " God" him- 
self, made the Christian part of the world more 
" honest," more temperate, or less gallant, than the rest 
of it ? 

An eminent scientific writer remarks, that no matter 
how many and how grave the warnings, the same errors 
and crimes occur inexactly the same proportion one year 
after the other, relatively to the population. Of course ; 
telling people that right instead of wrong ought to be 
done, is telling them nothing which they do not know. 
They want to be told how to he able to do right. 

The religious and moral, and social and political hy- 
pothesis, that people ought, isolatedly and individually, 
to do right, logically assumes that justice requires re- 
vengeful punishment to be inflicted on those who do not 
come up to the fashionable standard of right ; and law 
and government, being based on the current vindictive 
religion and its consequent morality, and on the hypo- 
thesis of individual responsibility and " duty," neces- 
sarily persist in the cruel blunder of punishing " crime." 

The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, is simply an 
absurdity, inasmuch as there are no " sins" to be forgiv- 
en ; and the philosophy which that doctrine incrusts is 
contradictory and unjust, except as part and parcel of the 
religion and government of science; according to which, 
well doing to any extent worth mentioning is matter of 
knowledge, and to be achieved only by the combined 
and entire force of scientifically organized humanity, in 
alliance with the scientifically developed and combined 
force of all the rest of nature iu the connection ; and 
therefore what are now called " sins," are simply mani- 



78 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

festations of the blundering and inefficiency of those wha 
manage our social architecture. 

True, positive, comprehensible sociology will include 
both religion and government — eschew both virtue and 
vice, or rather include them in good and evil, and be no- 
thing less, than the art of arranging man's material, poli- 
tical, social, industrial, and personal concerns, so harmo- 
niously and scientifically, as to secure liberty, and, in 
short, perfection, throughout. So as to leave no part of 
nature — least of all man — in the predicament of being 
imperfect, in consequence of the imperfection, or false^ 
inharmonious position, of something belonging to itself, 
or to the connection. 

Sec. 63. To the masses we must look for the indica- 
tions of actual progress. It is a most mischievous delu- 
sion to suppose thai because the few whose intellects are 
above the average, and whose opportunities happen to 
correspond, are emancipated to the extent of Pantheism, 
any progress practically useful^ has Ijeen made. How 
free can those be, who have to enjoy their liberty clarv- 
destinely? Until the masses are free, the upper classes 
will have to suppress their free thoughts or sneakingly 
clothe them in language enigmatical to the masses, who, 
if they understood it, would soon convince their superi- 
ors (?) of the folly of supposing that freedom, or any 
other good thing could be enjoyed whilst the rest of man- 
kind, or any of them, were, either directly or indirectly, 
deprived of it. 

Man, in the aggregate, is the superior portion of the 
subjective intellectual organ of all nature or existence in 
the connection as a grand a^rgregate or whole. Suppress- 
ing the function of an individual brain in infancy, as su- 
pernaturalism does, aflfects the individual exactly as dis- 
astrously as the aggregate of such suppression affects all 
in the connection ; and fostering intellect will conse- 
quently produce throughout all existence with which we 
are connected, effects, good, in exact proportion as those 
now produced are bad. Can imagination itself paint 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 79 

anything more to be desired ? Is it impossible to displace 
intellect killing by intellect fostering? Is abuse alone 
practicable ? especially in the higest department of na- 
ture ? Let the teaching in the nurserys, Sunday schools, 
and churches be reversed^ and '' nature from her seat" 
will ''give signs of" y<9?/"that 2i}\\^^ found, Nature 
says to man in thunder tones, in volcano tones, in tornado 
tones, and whispers loudly through the Aurora Borealis 
which is spasmodically producing destructive frost in 
Summer : — " If you will not use me, I will ahuse you till 
you do." 

Sec. 54. As soon as man is persuaded that sociology 
is a science and art, he will simultaneously see that it is 
nothing less than the science of sciences and art of arts, 
which includes all science and art. He will see, also, 
the radical futility of all attempts at individual, districts 
town, county, or even country salvation, except approx- 
imatively. Human salvation is an operation so exten- 
sive that the whole world is required for its field, and the 
whole power of fully developed and most advantageously 
combined nature is required for its motor. 

When man sees this, he will throw his case wholly, 
as he now does partially, into the hands of the most sci- 
entific, with this all important reservation : — -that results 
are to be judged by himself; on the same principle that 
although none but tailors can make clothing, all men 
— nay, each human limb — can feel whether or not it 
fits. 

Should the understanding of any be so obtuse as to 
object, that collective man is a kind of theoretical everj- 
hod J ^ who ^practically^ is nobody; and that individual 
action, after all, must be the thing ; I reply, that indivi- 
dual action is an entire chimera ; that man is inevitably 
connected, not only with his fellow man, but with all na- 
ture of which he can conceive ; that that connection is 
simply modifiable, and needs only to be rightly, instead 
of wrongly — harmoniously instead of antagonistically — 
scientifically instead of opinionistically modified. He 



so THE RELIGION OF SCIENCB. 

who merely strives to preserve his individual freedom, 
thereby loses it. Only when man in concert shall strive 
for the freedom oiman will freedom have any existence 
worth naming. 

Sec. 55. As religion is the theory the practice of 
which is government, every species of government, even 
that of the greatest possible anarchy, must be founded on 
some sort of religion, or on the fragments of it ; and 
must be good or bad, free or despotic, in proportion a& 
that religion is true or false ; and must furthermore be 
anarchical, in proportion as the religion on which it is 
founded is fragmentary. 

The pretended separation of religion from govern- 
ment — church from State — in the United States, is the 
most transparent humbug ever perpetrated ; it is but a 
divorce a mensa et toro^ with the sitb rosa understanding 
that maintenance shall be made up in reality, for its lack 
in appearance. 

The church's property is exempt from taxation, and 
its ministers from military and jury duty, under the most 
pitiable subterfuge; praj'er, the main pillar and support 
of ultranatural religion, is openly paid for from the na- 
tional and every State treasury ; the general principles 
of ultranaturalism have at length obtained the name of 
the ^' paramount religion," are taught in all the public 
schools, and are thus supported by taxation ; and a se- 
venth portion of time is set apart by sham law, for the 
exclusive use of mystery-mongers. And all this, is in 
accordance with law so shammy that it is even contrary 
to the " constitution^ 

Here, again, I must ask the reader's patience, whilst 
I repeat, that the freedom to which every human being 
has a right, is the freedom to have that length of life and 
perfection of happiness, which his or her natural desires 
indicate the necessity for, and (unless nature is a hoax) 
the possibilitv of; to fulfill the law of his or her nature \ 
which can only be done, as we shall show, by fulfilling 
the law of all nature in the connection ; which, surely^ 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIYE. 81 

must be the art of arts which requires the aid of all sci- 
ence, past, present, and to come, combined ; and the uni- 
ted and harmonious co-operation of all mankind, and of 
the power of all nature in the connection fully developed. 
Can, then, the true architects of human liberty and hap- 
piness receive their diploma from the majority through 
the ballot box ? admitting for the sake of the argument, 
that the majority could thus actually give any diploma, 
instead of being swindled into being made the tools of 
" smart" " scoundrels." 

The liberty of individuals, then, to pursue either 
goodness or happiness, except in concert, and aided by 
the highest science, and all the power of nature as fast as 
it becomes, though science, available, is sham liberty ; it 
is the most insulting and cruel mockery ; it is as chimer- 
ical as is the liberty of paupers to board in the best 
hotels. 

Sec. 56. Even when nature shall be perfectly deve 
loped ; when man shall be as free, happy, and long-lived, 
as combined and organized science can make him ; when 
supply — the natural passions being the judge — is fully 
adequate to demand : even then, memory will, as it now 
does, invest the past in the life of individuals with more 
charms than it really had, and anticipation will lend the 
future more delight than it will prove able to pay. As 
experience teaches man this, he will, when he arrives 
at perfection^ without any painful disappointment, 
but with that happy good nature with which one 
relishes a good joke, feel that he is, as it were, being 
amused by a series of sensuous illusions, which, like the 
scenery in a theatre, are pleasant, mainly because they 
are not fully exhibited ; but the eternal repetition of 
which, would be first stale, then irksome, and finally in- 
tolerable. Even could man be assured hy natures com- 
hined power personified^ that he was to be unendingly 
treated to variety ; such assurance would carry its own 
absurdity — nay, impossibility, on its face ; and the most 
short-sighted would be instantly conscious of what it now 



82 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCZ* 

takes the longest sighted a good while to comprehend ; 
that that variety could not, atl:er all, exceed the changes 
possible to be rung on the senses, only five in number, 
without entirely changing the individual. 

The spirit or substance — not the ahsdxite of immor- 
tality, is all which man really wants. In the language 
of some old writer, " the spirit giveth life, but the letter 
fcilleth ;" and the letter of eternal life, would so incon- 
ceivably worse them kill, that man would, after enjoying 
infinitely less than an eternity of conscious existence, 
b€ willing to purchase annihilation with a thousand 
deaths. 

Sec. 57. Shams, or counterfeits, indicate the exist- 
ence, actual or prospective, of realities • which realities 
must be £jood, in proportion as their counterfeits are 
bad. 

Because those who first undertook to regulate human- 
ity were shams — because collective man's first head was 
all hut a counterfeit, it was hastily concluded that a head 
for collective man must de facto "be a false head, and tti- 
ierly pernicious. Bat abruptly rejecting collective man's 
incipient, arbitrary, soi disant supernaturalistic head, 
instead of substituting a scientific one for it, almost des- 
troyed the nucleus of the collective human organism 
-which had begun formation ; and for the commission of 
this bungling sin of attempting to create vacuity where 
nature most abhors it — of attempting to dispense with a 
head for collective man, the perpetrators and their des- 
cendants have been punished by a threefold hydra-head- 
ed infiiction : — ^The hydra-headed absurdity, Protestant- 
ism ; the hydra-headed fool, Skepticism ; and finally, 
the hydra-headed abomination, Demagogocracy — a com- 
plication, in a chronic form, of sham religion, sham law, 
sham virtue, sham vice, and sham every thing but evil ; 
summing up in that most mischievous of all shams — 
sham liberty ; the liberty to be as enslaved and misera- 
ble as the utmost possible antagonism, negativism, oppo- 
sition and let-aloneism can make us. 



FTINDAMENTAL AND AEGUlOINTA'nVE. 83 

Sec. 58. The meanest demagogue that ever sponted 
his murderons (yes, emphatically, wholesale murderous 
in its consequences) clap-trap from a stump, knows that 
it is natural and therefore inevitable for mankind to be 
led. It is only the more zealous than wise friends of hu- 
man progress, and of course the unthinking masses them- 
selves, who imagine the contrary. 

Let us illustrate the principle, reduced to so small a 
compass that we can see it at a glance, of all the govern- 
ment that ever has existed ; or ever can exist, till man- 
kind are led by those who understand that the length 
and value of their own lives depend on the length and 
value of the lives of all mankind ; and who found the 
highest science and art — religion and government — on 
all the lower sciences and arts : — In June, 1859, about six 
ruffians organized,, (mind that) and went on board a Sta- 
ten Island ferry boat, selected one out of three or four 
hundred passengers for their victim, knocked him down, 
trampled on him to their entire satisfaction, in presence 
of all the others, (as court sentences confessedly unjust^ 
and constitutional decisions and government orders which 
all know to be at variance with right, are enforced by 
the organized few who govern, whilst the unorganized 
millions who suffer or are insulted thereby look peace- 
ably on) and afterwards made all on board clear a space 
in which they held a triumphal dance ; no one, all the 
while, interfering, as they well knew they would not, hav- 
ing no organization or common understanding among 
each other. 

Need I proceed to illustrate the philosophy of all this ? 
The six ruffians understood it, though probably not three 
more in the whole crowd did. There was no organization 
for good and therefore so very small an organization for 
evil had it all its own way till it had carried out its des- 
igns. Thus the strongest man in a tribe, or one who has 
done some terror-inspiring or wonder exciting feat in a 
nation^ becomes the nucleus of, and organizes a hierarchy; 
or a gang of idle and dissolute fellows nominate some 
one as chief of a republic ; that is, a distributor to them 



84: THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

of its spoils ; another is nominated for the like purpose 
by an opposition gang, and the people stupidly vote for 
and bear the alternate spoliation of one or the other, till 
it so very sensibly touches so many of them that a row 
ensues, and a military chieftain seizes the reins of power 
from both parties of spoliators, and the peaceably dis- 
posed masses submit to be led and robbed by him as the 
least of two evils. 

Is it not as clear as the multiplication table that some 
dozen or so of cunning, " smart" scoundrels can wield 
the destinies of any nation once delivered over to what 
is called popular rule? The two gangs of villains who 
nominate their chief spoil distributer form the focii of 
the eliptic whirlpool into which all the nation must as 
things now are be drawn, though a few scattering indivi- 
duals may attempt not to be. And this is popular 
suffrage — this the scheme of wholesale rascality which 
the religion and government of science can alone pre- 
vent. 

Government is but very slightly more a matter of 
will, or a thing to be regulated by unscientific opinion, 
than is gravitation. All natural (i. e. all) forces, are link- 
ed together, the succeeding depending on the preceding, 
from the most tangible physics to and including religious 
and polical force. The few have always, under whatever 
form of government, turned against the many their own 
force — made the people their own enslavers ; and always 
will do so until they truly understand their own in- 
terests. 

In all popular governments, with respect to any great 
question, so soon as the majority's decision is known, the 
taciturnity of individuals on that question exactly resem- 
bles that which the Inquisition so notoriously produced 
in Spain ; and if anyone doubts whether the Inquisition 
itself was or was not a popular measure, let him go to 
Spain and ask the first hundred people he meets if they 
would have it abolished. Had the Inquisition existed in 
the United States, at the time of the Revolution, and 
had OUT institutions heen in accordance therewith^ 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARQUMENrATIVE. 85 

would the people have abolished it ? No more than 
they have Sabbathism, Bibliolatry, or conjugal, wages, 
and chattel slavery. 

The president of a railroad company which had been 
prosecuted for running cars on Sundays, says : — " the 
board of directors would regret to do any act at variance 
with the views of any large and resjpectahle class of their 
fellow citizens, except 2X the call of what they supposed 
to comprise a vast majority of the publicP Also, an in- 
fluential daily newspaper in the city of New York, in 
commenting on the attempt to force the Bible into the 
public schools, naively remarks : — " There are many who 
have too profound a reverence for the Bible to approve 
of its use as a school book. If they should happen to 
he in the majority in any ward, surely their feelings 
ought to he respected^ Exists there a person of common 
understanding incapable of comprehending the intensely 
despotic logic of all this? Tet such is the doctrine, not, 
probabl j^j of the persons above referred to who uttered it, 
but of pseudo popular government^ to which scientific 
direction, which will be, after established, r^aZZy popular, 
will be the antipodes. The ballot box, judged by its ef- 
fects, without reference to the history of its origin^ is an 
infernal contrivance of the leaders of the majority — of 
force — by which to ascertain the utmost stretch to 
which they can tyrannize ; it is a veritable oppression, 
ometer. 

Sec. 59. Not only human nature, but all nature 
within the range of thought, is theoretically, and there- 
fore practically connected. Everybody, therefore, in 
minding his or her own business, must simultaneously 
intermingle in the affairs of everybody else ; and how- 
ever we may rebel against, and thus disarrange, the col- 
lective human organism and antagonize its environment, 
there is no escape from our connection with both. All 
mankind form, from a scientific social point of view, one 
continuous being ; each so called individual is, during con- 
scious existence, indissolubly wedded to every other, and 



86 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

to all nature in the connection, " for better or for worse ;" 
and absolutely isolated individual liberty to have, or even 
^' pursue" happiness, or to do right or wrong, is an entire 
chimera. The question, then, is to find that Highest 
Law, which shall dynamically^ (instead of statically^ as 
the embryo of Highest Law attempted to do) harmonize 
humanity, and all existence in the connection ; displace 
^Jiam by real liberty, and secure to every individual — 

I. The Eight to have been begotten in the day time, 
by perfectly healthy parents, circumstanced amidst all 
that can please, enliven, and cause joyousness. 

n. Right to enjoy, in infancy, the healthful and sooth- 
ing contact of other infants, and to be tended in all res- 
pects, in the best possible manner, whice wholh science 
and combined love can suggest. 

HI. Right to be educated so as to fully develop both 
the physical and intellectual faculties, to the mutual ben- 
efit of both individual and collective man. 

IV. Right to eat the most wholesome food, and drink 
the most wholesome drink. 

Y. Right to breathe pure air ; as pure, even, as the 
earth will be furnished with through means which we 
shall herein indicate. 

YL Right to reside in apartments sufficiently large 
to be both commodious and healthful ; and to have the 
enjoyment, in common with others, (as we now have 
of roads) of architecture in the highest degree magni- 
ficent. 

YH. Right to sleep, rest, or exercise, so as best to 
promote both physical and mental health. 

YIH. Right to dress in accordance with health, com- 
fort, and enlightened taste. 

IX, Right to think, speak, or print, sense instead of 
nonsense ; and without having sneakingly to resort to 
evasion, subterfuge, or double meaning. 

X. Right to enjoy the benefit of a due equilibriation ' 
of power, and to avoid being robbed of active power, 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AKajMENTATIVE. 87 

though its exercise being either inherited, usurped, or 
delegated. 

XI. Eight to require of Sociologians the value — 
the benefits — of combined science ; and to hold them 
responsiblefor practical residts^ as we now do professors 
of fragmentary science and art. 

XII. Right to the property we can acquire, though 
an equitable arrangement between the claims of labor, 
capita], and skill. 

XIII. Right to all which our real coherent desires, 
indicate the necessity for, and therefore the possibility of ; 
and consequently, 

XIY. The Right to live so long and so happily, on 
JEarth^ as to perfectly satisfy our desire for conscious exis- 
tence — to substantially realize Heaven on Earth — '' eter- 
nity" in time — to ring, 'till we are willing to finally 
stop so doing, all the changes possible on the five senses. 

Sec. 60. The results of the sham or demagogocra- 
tical liberty to secure any or all of the foregoing rights 
are so glaringly before the world, that I shall portray them 
no farther than is necessary in order to expose the spe- 
ciousness by means of which they are continued to be in- 
flicted on mankind. 

I. The sham, or ultranaturalistico-demago^ocratical- 
ly jumbled up right to sexual intercourse, [Marriage is 
a civil contract, substantially enforcible hj criminal 
process] results in the liberty to make a bargain so abom- 
inably unnatural, that nullity is stamped on its very face, 
by every law of right, and by all the real laws of nature 
in relation thereto ; and in the liberty, on the part of ofi- 
spring, to inherit, and perpetuate, all the physical and 
mental diseases which the original sin of ignorance, and 
all the complications which quack treatment has ad- 
ded thereto, have inflicted on mankind ; and in the ad- 
ditional liberty to be begotten in the night by parents 
who are so toil-worn or care-worn as to be half asleep ; 
and w^ho perform the act of generation by way of as- 
suaging their sorrows and chagrins, or by way of kill- 



88 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

ing ennui, or patching up a matrimonial quarrel ; to be 
literally begotten in " iniquity" and " conceived in sin," 
and to have the" teeth set on edge" by the '^sour grapes'' 
of matrimony which human beings are now condemned 
to chew whilst becoming parents — the right to be born 
predisposed to evil. 

II. The sham liberty of parents to bring up their 
children in their own w^ay — in the isolated household — 
is productive of evils — slaveries — to specify which, would 
require an immense volume. The immediate result of 
this, and the preceding sham liberty, is, as shown by sta- 
tistics, that of all children born, one in four die before 
they are one j^ear of age ; and the life power of the re- 
mainder is so crippled, that it gives out before it has 
any thing near finished its scientific-artistic-natural 
course. 

In the City of New York, however, mo7'e than half 
the children born die before they are ten years old; 
and though this extraordinary mortality is clearly trace- 
able to swill-milk, neither ''the predominant religon" 
nor the morality founded thereon, abate the horror in 
the least. " T?te lauP^ has also been invoked against it, 
but the upshot was that its terrors were turned against 
those who sought to protect helpless infancy from the 
deadly poison, and its shield was thrown over those who, 
for lucre, dealt it out. Each rotting, stump-tailed cow, 
from whose festering udders the death-virus was sent forth 
on its mission of murder and woe, had, in effect, the 
power to exercise '' the elective franchis^^ — to YOTE ; 
nay, a majority of said cows constituted church-mem- 
bers ; church members, too, some of whom gave liber- 
ally to enable missionaries to go to China, to preach down 
Pagaiiistic infanticide ! And this is a fair specimen of 
the efficacy of the prevailing false religion, sham law, 
and Tjogus morality ; and a perfect exemplification of 
the practical workings of " elective franchise" through- 
out. 

III. The sham liberty with respect to education, with 
which skeptics are so elated because it has made a feint 
of throwing off a particle of its shamminess, still results 



FUJSTDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 89 

in the perpetuation of all the nonsense, with but few of 
the benefits which supernatnralisin has ever produced. 
For special proof of which, see Gobbets History of The 
Reformation in England, which is generally corroborated 
by all cotemporaneous and subsequent history. 

IV. The sham liberty to eat and drink, of course ac- 
cording to the previously depraved taste or judgment of 
the individual, results in the general impossibility of get- 
ting any thing fit either to eat or drink. This inflicts an 
immense amount of sickness on humanity, and, like 
shams No. 1 and 2, takes a tremendous slice from the 
length of human life. But a recognition of the Religion 
of Science has obtained in some cities, to the extent of 
furnishing, by the collective body, pure water for the use 
of all; of attempting to prevent the sale of diseased meat ; 
of constructing sewers for the benefit of all, and of doing 
a suflficient number of things by the collective body, 
which seemingly contravene individual freedom but real- 
ly augment it, to put beyond all question the practicabil^ 
ity of The Religion of Science throughout all human 
concerns; and it is now clearly demonstrated, that just 
in proportion as science, (always''in opposition to, instead 
of elected by, popular prejudice) establishes its rule, 
sham liberty gives place to real liberty. Capitalists and 
inventors, if you would make such an arrangement with 
laborers that none should be idle, and allow them a share 
of profits sufficient to purchase for them all necessaries 
of real life, it would be a better speculation, from a 
purely business point of view, by one thousand per cent, 
than the most cunni7ig^ underhanded one you ever en- 
tered into. 

Y. That first of human right — the right to breathe 
pure air — is ruthlessly trampled on by sham liberty in 
respect to architecture ; and human right to health 
and life is here, again, subjected to a fearful curtail 
ment. 

YL The sham liberty with respect to residence, is a 
most insulting and cruel sham to nineteen twentieths of 
mankind. There is, to be sure, literally^ nothing in the 

8 



90 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

" constitution" or "laws" to jprevent working carpenters, 
masons, or hod carriers, from residing in elegant and 
well ventilated houses; but there is really nothing in all 
the " law and liberty" of which we boast, to prevent- 
these from? having to crowd themselves into apartments, 
or rather holes, utterly unsuited to any animal with 
lungs. 

V II The sham liberty to sleep, rest, or exercise, is 
liberty so very shammy, that its results are, that sleep- 
ing, resting, and exercising, are done inversely to their 
necessity. 

yill. The sham liberty with respect to dress, sub- 
jects all to ridicule, who do not make themselves so ridi- 
culous, and such slaves, as to yield blind obedience to the 
monthly changing caprices of the Paris tailors, dress 
makers and miliners. This is one of the most expensive 
tyrannies to which even sham liberty subjects its dupes. 
It is constantly ruining men, more than any thing else, 
prostituting (for life or for a shorter period) women, 
and contributes largely to periodical national bank- 
ruptcy. 

IX. The sham liberty to think, speak or print, prac- 
tically results in the liberty of thinking, speaking, and 
printing only what ultranaturalistico-demagogocratically 
befooled mediocrity approves. 

X. The sham liberty to keep power equilibriated — 
to prevent its " stealing from the many to the few" — re- 
sults in the despotism of the scum of humanity, with ma- 
jority force for its backer and dupe, and minority slavery 
for its sustainer. 

XI. The right to hold sociologians responsible for re- 
sults, is, in sham sociology, as shammy as is the right of 
weakness trampled under foot, to ask want-driven force 
to let up its iron heel, 

XII. The sham liberty to acquire property, is the li- 
berty to acquire it in accordance with the rule that " to 
him who hath, shall be given^ and he shall have more 
and more abundantly ; but from him who hath next to 
nothing, shall be taken away even what he hath. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE 91 

A volume ten times as large as this is likely to be, 
would be required to show up, in detail, the despotic re- 
sults of the sham liberty to buy as cheap and sell as dear 
as possible. 

Trade can truly exist, only between producer and 
consumer : all the intermediate, with the exception of 
that which appointed agents should effect, must be frau- 
dulent, cheating, false trade ; the universally failing trade 
of the United States, is the offspring of that '' free trade" 
which places producers and consumers as far asunder as 
are Europe and the interior regions of America. 

Sham " free trade" also monopolizes all the public 
land in the United States worth having, and holds it un- 
cultivated, till sales for taxes, non-resident heirs, bonds 
for deeds, &c., &c., render a clear title impossible. In 
the vast West, over a territory sufficient, under Scienti- 
fic Sociology, for the luxurious accommodation of the 
present population of the World, there straggle here and 
there, hovels, unfit for the accommodation of even four 
footed mules, wherein lodge ragged, often starving, and 
generally ague-shaken human bipeds, a great portion of 
whom are ready, any day, to exchange their situations 
for even the most forlorn chance at gold digging or even 
filibustering. Behold sham free trade. Behold dema- 
gogocracy. 

Under the auspices of sham liberty, there exists, 
throughout the whole domain of labor, capital, and skill, 
or brigundage to which legitimating piracy on the ocean, 
or what is acknowledged to be robbery, on land, would 
be mere innocent childs play. 

XTTI. The sham liberty to accomplish our natural 
desires, each on his "own hook," and without interfering 
"unlawfully" with others, results in our so entirely fail- 
ing to accomplish them, that the present life is universal- 
ly considered such a sham, that a life after death is the 
excuse which is generally made in behalf of the supposed 
author of all things — the " almighty" getter up of the 
failure and humbug which " virtue" and " morality" 



92 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

strive to reconcile us to, or try to persuade us to be con- 
tent with making the best of. 

XIV. The right to live long and happily enough, in 
this worlds to satisfy the taste which nahtre has given us 
for happiness and conscious existence, is uniformly con- 
ceded, by the " virtuous" and " moral" sticklers for hotch- 
potch sociology, to be the wildest Utopianism. And sure- 
ly, they thus virtually surrender their whole case ; at 
least, so far as to leave themselves nothing worth con- 
tending for in '' this vale of tears," and therefore no 
grounds for quarreling with me. 

The present religious, political, and social hotch-potch, 
we see, is made up of the most miserable shams, snares, 
delusions and failures ; and what is most unaccountable of 
all is, that its dupes confess it, without abandoning their 
opposition to those who propose any ^n^^ZZ^^^JZ^ measures 
for displacing it by something really good. 

But the sum of the results of sham liberty are, in 
short, wages slavery, or unrequited labor, enforced by 
the starvation penalty ; Chattel slavery, or almost as un- 
requited labor, enforced by the lash penalty ; extending 
which, is now confessedly extending the area of what 
passes for freedom in the lao^i popular government in 
the world. The largest portion of " The Model Repub- 
lic" has always been composed of what were confessedly 
" Slave States ; " and an Honorable member of Congress 
has, in 1860, moved that the remainder shall be called 
^' Servile States ; " so that slavery and servility is all that 
the ballot box has left for the " star-spangled banner to 
wave over. 

The prominent institutions of sham liberty are : — A 
plentiful supply of gibbets ; the iron pulleys of which 
do not rust for lack of use ; spacious prisons well filled 
with victims ; still more spacious alms houses, equally 
well filled with wretched and degraded paupers; a 
frightful array of shops where poisoned rum is sold to 
the unsuspecting; mystery shops and quack-medicine 
manufactories in great abundance, and remarkably pro- 
portioned to each other ; and it is well worthy of notice, 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AKGUMENTATTTE. 93 

that on Sundays, the only days, when full Jialf the rum 
holes are shut up, but all the mystery shops are open, 
crime is uncommonly abundant. Armies of quack doc- 
tors, lawyers, judges, and policemen ; and more than 
thirty State houses, or sham law manufactories, and hun- 
dreds of halls for city sham law manufacturing, the bulk 
of the inmates of all of which might, with great benefit 
to society, exchange places with the state's and city's 
prisoners. 

The ^^ respectahle^^ advocates of a system of which 
such is the fruit, may apply to each other the flattering 
title of " good citizens ; but when man shall be worthy 
the name he bears, they will simply receive credit for 
lacking the courage, boldness, and comparative honesty 
and humanity of the pirate or highway robber. 

Many of the above institutions, in a milder form, 
were inherited, 'tis true, from the mother country ; yet 
adopted and augmented by sham liberty, which is thus 
reduced to the wretched alternative of pleading, and iu 
the main, falsely too, that it is " no worse^^ than the des- 
potism to be ^^fre^"* from which, rivers of blood have 
been shed, and millions of treasure spent. 

Sec. 61. Because absolutism's attempt to regulate in-- 
dividual concerns arbitrarily resulted in despotism, maru 
committed the worse error of running into the opposite- 
extreme of adopting, or rather attempting to adopt, the 
let-alone system ; and setting up the motto that *^ the 
world is governed too much," the soi disant sticklers for 
the least possible quntity of government, have entangled 
their dupes with " laws" till it is impossible to decipher 
them ; and have ground their constituents into the very 
dust with government. Each State manufactures several 
hundred additional " laws" every year ! 

But the most lamentable blunder of " Democracy" is, 
that it has not only adopted, but clings with a death 
grasp to, the most onerous of the regulations of absolu- 
tism, and even of ultranaturalism ; (the marriage laws) 



94: THE RELIGION OF SCIENOE. 

laws which, more effectually and cruelly than any others, 
curtail liberty, and destroy human happiness. 

It is not freedom in love which causes the evils laid 
to its charge ; it is man's ignorance of the law of that 
freedom. Besides, what evil does love freedom engender 
, worse than that which results from virtue ? Prime virtue 
consists, in a poor girl sitting fourteen hours a day, 
stitch, stitch, stitching, with^ the head down, the stomach 
bent, the blood stagnating, and the vitals consequently 
decaying. Is continence an absolute good ? or is there 
any absolute evil in sexual indulgence which marriage 
neutralizes ? Evidently, the foundation of what passes 
for both virtue and vice is ignorance ; ignorance of how 
to gratify our natural desires without evil consequences ; 
for wherein consists the moral difference between having 
two wives or husbands above ground, and between hav- 
ing one above^ and the other under ground? Not that I 
am going to advocate that more barbarous form of mar- 
riage — Pollgamy — but how can those who believe in 
"departed spirits" justify the " morality" of having two 
consecutive wives or husbands, or even lovers, even though 
the former wife, husband or lover be dead, on principles 
which would not equally justify the simultaneous having 
of such ? Is it not the refinement of cruelty, (to say no- 
thing of the " vice" of the thing) to torture the feelings 
of poor disembodied hovering spirits, who cannot avenge 
their wrongs or insults, by second marriages, or even 
loves ? Evidently, the evils laid to sexual gratification 
result from man's ignorance of the laws in relation 
thereto. 

Sec. 62. Isolated facts are not only of little use, but 
are often even hurtful to be known. To be useful, facts 
must be systematically arranged, connected, and combin- 
ed. And only when they are so, from physics to sociol- 
ogy, will knowledge have attained to its aim — the per- 
fection of human happiness on eaith, and the true Reli- 
gion and government of Science have triumphed over 
the false religion of mystery, the bogus religion of pro- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIYE. 95 

testantism, the opposition religion of infidelity, and the 
opinionistic government of demagogocracy. 

Nature declares nothing more emphatically than the 
propensity of the mass of mankind to confide in, and 
mentally repose on, leaders. The people are necessarily 
employed in specialities ; and for the rest, they want^ 
and need to be amused ; and to have the general theo- 
ries which they are to practice^ ready made to their hands. 
They eschew nothing so much as abstract, comprehen- 
sive, intellectual exercise ; and in spite of all the science 
which can be disseminated among t\iQm. pieGemeal^ the 
great body of mankind will remain as much the sport 
and prey of religious and political quacks and impostors 
as they now are, or ever were. Have the masses ceased 
to be imposed upon by Popery, except to be equally im- 
posed upon by Protestantism? Has the divine right of 
majorities ever yet proved less onerous than the divine 
right of kings ? Has not Mormonism fully proved that 
the masses, in spite of public schools, printing presses, 
and even free discussion, are as easily imposed upon in 
the nineteenth century as the y were during the " Dark 
Ages?" {En passant^ Paganism has made a really 
greater demonstration in Christian California, than all 
Christendom, though missionaries and millions on milions 
of treasure, has ever made on Paganism.) The thing to 
be done is, to show mankind's leaders that it is for their 
own benefit to lead their charge right, instead of 
wrong. 

The mass of mankind, will continue to be the alter- 
nate victims of successive setts of religious, moral and 
political quacks and impostors, until The Religion and 
government of Science extricates them ; the profesors of 
the sciences^ meanwhile, " minding their own business/' 
as they blindly imagine, and laughing at what they are 
so short-sighted as to suppose " does not concern them ;'' 
whilst infidels are throwing away their strength in bat- 
tling with the Bible, apparently blind to the fact, that 
twenty or thirty years ago, when anti-Bibliolatry waa 
more of a novelty. Frances Wright could fill the Park 



96 THE RELIGION OP SCIENCE. 

Theatre with her listeners ; whilst now, one hundred peo- 
ple can seldom be congregated in New York to listen 
to the fruitless ravings of those aflB^icted with Bibli- 
ophobia. 

These " infidels" also seem unaware that before the 
Bible existed, and where it does not, equally with where 
it does now exist, folly and imposture were and are equal- 
ly rampant ; due allowance being made for circumstan- 
ces extraneous to Bibliology. 

The proportion which those who have neither taste 
nor capacity for those comprehensive views necessary to 
human regeneration bear to those who have, is strikingly 
manifested in the statistics of the book trade. Works, 
written by the same authors decrease in sale, in propor- 
tion as they address themselves to the reader's intellect ; 
and increase in sale, in proportion as they address them- 
selves to, and please his feelings. The few think^ the 
■m2^xijfeel; and when the few think as deeply as they 
are capable of, and become as scientific as they are cap- 
able of becoming, they will find that it is as much as even 
they can do to comprehend and work out the science 
of human regeneration or perfection. As soon as man's 
principal leaders— the clergy— are ripe for the change, the 
masses will transfer their faith from the religion of absur- 
dity and its corresponding government of humbug, to 
The Religion and Government of Science. 

Nature classifies mankind into operators, scientific 
discoverers, and directors, as I have perspicuously shown 
in " The Religion of Science f'^ and the fact that operations 
not more complicated than house building cannot be car- 
ried on without such classification, is conclusive evidence 
that when sociology rises above the present hotch-potch 
of protestantism, demagogocracy, and " infidelity," it 
must be through such classification. 

Until science, from base to apex, from physics to so- 
ciology, is a religious, or connected whole, nature will re- 
main developed inversely to her means. Science first 
f)ermeates the simplest, or coarsest, and will seem to be 
aboring in vain until she all but finishes her undertak- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGTJMENTATIYE. 97 

ings. If I have, in effect, repeated this often, recollect 
that the dolefully monotonous opposite has been repeat- 
ed, with no variation as to sense, for untold ages. 

Sec. 63. In the vegetable and lower animal worlds, 
nature reaches maturity very rapidly. Plants bear their 
seeds and fruits generally in one year; in which short 
time, they become as perfect as they can be theoretically 
shown capable of becoming. Man will be as much longer 
in reaching the perfection which his nature is capable of, 
as he is, or rather will be-higher in the scale of nature, 
than are those. In the mean time, the lower depart- 
ments of nature, where ends quickly answer to means, 
will be more satisfactory objects of contemplation to the 
thinker, during his sensitive moments, and when he 
wishes to relax his mind from deep abstraction, than will 
the to be highest department, where means, whilst wait- 
ing to be used, are so extravagantly wasted. Who, that 
is capable of any degree of reflection, does not, like 
Rousseau, love retirement amidst rural scenery, better 
than the haunts of man as he now is ? 

Until science is a whole, mankind will continue to be 
miserable among its fragments ; similarly as, if a crowd- 
ed theatre was on fire, all might perish or get more or 
less injured, not for lack of power, both to extricate them- 
selves, and put out the fire, but for lack of a scientifically 
regulated, religious, or unanimous use of their power ; 
because they exercised their power in accordance with 
sham liberty — isolatedly ; each striving singly, to save 
himself, and thus blocking the vomitories with squeezed to 
death bodies, instead of religiously, and in concert, 
marching safely out, and extinguishing the fire. 

Sec. 64. Every field of inquiry has been pronounc- 
ed, by faithless, unbelieving old fogyism, impervious to 
science 'till science has conquered it. Talk about mira- 
cles ? Human progress has been and will, till completed, 
continue to be, a series of miracles — of "impossible" 
performances — of realized Utopias. Sociology will be 



98 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

the conquest of science which will crown all science with 
success, rectify supernaturalism, and annihilate old fogy- 
ism, protestantism, infidelity, and demagogocracy. The 
highest Law will supercede and displace the present " beg- 
garly elements" of law." 

ITature is neither the impotency which supernatural- 
ism takes her to be, nor the scrimp which old fogyism 
pronounces her. She will prove to be sufficient ; and she 
even now shows that she is profuse, to the verge of pro- 
digality. The zosperms which she pours forth in the 
production of a single animal, are superabundant by 
myriads ; and from the semen in which man is nucleat- 
ed, throughout perceptible nature, the means for his per- 
fection, equally lavish, wait but to be used. Some of 
them brilliantly becken him on, like the Aurora Borealis ; 
the destructive frosts, accompanying which, when it makes 
an uncommon demonstration in Summer, seem to make lu- 
minous and thermal action say :— " develop us-unchain us 
— ^let us benefit you, or we will abuse you till you do ;" 
whilst the lightning, the tornado, and the volcano, more 
roughly spur man forward, and in thunder tones seem to 
say, behold the evil which man's ungregated, antagonis- 
tic, consequently wasted and therefore too passive power 
produces ; and know, that reversing the process, organ- 
izing, and operating on coarser nature, instead of being 
all but wholly operated on by it, will produce a like pro- 
portion of good. Actual existence is full, even to burst- 
ing, with the means for its development and man's per- 
fection ; and natural evil is but good outrageously im- 
patient, as it were, to be manifested as such ; and deter- 
mined, at all events, not to he inactive^ lest it should die 
outright ; and then, the World and Man would have to 
look to the supernatural for help. 

The Keligion of Science will be inaugurated by ex- 
tending certain and exact knowledge into the highest 
which thought can reach ; where folly, mystery, and un- 
certainty now reign ; and where, consequently, religious, 
political and moral quacks revel to their own and their 
victims's mutual disadvantage. Man must repose as full 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARG3MENTATIYE. 99 

faith in complete science, as he now does in its fragments ; 
he must accept science in full — in the highest — precisely 
as he now accepts it in parts, — in the lowest. He must 
trust the scientific and artistic in the most complex of hu- 
man concerns — in religion, law and government — not as 
he now trusts religious impostors and moral and social 
quacks therein, but in as good faith as he now trusts sci- 
ence and art in matters as simple as tailoring, house- 
building, raih'oad travelling, and telegraphing. He must 
transfer his allegiance from the opinionistic to the cer- 
tain ; from the mysterious to the comprehensible ; from 
that, the value of which can only be decided after death^ 
to that, the value of which can be decided in this world. 
Only in The Religion of Science, can we have a religion, 
the results of which will be tangihle^ and sufl3.cient!y im- 
mediate, to prevent imposition on the part of its minis- 
ters from becoming chronic. The abuses of the Religion 
of Science can never become venerable ; and will always 
therefore be very quickly and easily remedied ; and the 
action of a government founded thereon will be as calcu- 
lable as that of a clock. 

Mankind, with reverence sometimes amounting to 
awe, do I behold your steam-engines, your electric tele- 
graphs, your architecture, your machinery, your naviga- 
tion. With profound respect do I look on your agricul- 
ture, and your special sciences and their corresponding 
special arts, even to boot blacking ; and your rnusic en- 
raptures me. But the sociology which you perpetrate 
whilst attending to every thing else, is as awful botchery 
as would be my attempt to cook a dinner, or navigate the 
largest ship through the most dangerous waters, whilst 
writing this book, and aided only by the general science 
of sciences, which I am herein unfolding. As to the din- 
ner, I should inevitably spoil its good materials ; and with 
respect to tlie ship, its cargo and its crew, myself includ- 
ed^ I should prove to be to the sharks what you are to 
demagogues— their purveyor. Nay, I might by the merest 
chance, not wreck the ship — whereas you always have 



100 THE RELIGIOIT OF SCIENCE. 

wrecked the " ship of state," whenever you have taken 
charge of it. Read even common school history and deny 
that if you can. 

Ye leaders who love mankind, or who would under- 
standingly love even yourselves, henceforth teach that 
good and free government must be founded on science — 
on the whole of science — on The Religion of Science ; 
instead of on popular folly, and the prejudices manufac- 
tured by ultranaturalism, directed by demagogism, as 
changeful as the wind, as despotic as majority-force and 
parasitically termed opinion. The motive power of true 
religion must and will be refined and enlightend, instead 
of gross, narrow, ignorant, selfishness. 

Let these truths go forth till they can be refuted, or 
till in all the churches and Sunday schools, they are 
taught, instead of mystery — ay, hymn'd instead of the 
horrid nonsense which now degrades even music : 

I. That atemptiog to "mind your own business" or 
become free, good, happy or " virtuous" isolatedly, or 
'' on your own hook," is chronic anarchy, wholesale mur- 
der or at least manslaughter, and inevitable suicide ; a 
scheme of heterogeneity, the inevitable results of which 
have uniformly been mutual swindling, mutual torment- 
ing, and mutual killing. 

II. That man in concert, must pursue reform ; and, 
guided by all science combined, and aided by the force 
of all nature in the connection fully developed, must ena- 
ble individuals to fulfil the law of their being, and ac- 
complish, in their natural sphere, the perfection of good- 
ness and happiness, of which their natural desires are the 
measure. Surely, masses are responsible for their parti- 
cles in sociology as in Physics. If the principles attempt- 
ed to be carried out in present religion, law and morals, 
were essayed in Physics, every particle of matter would 
be required to have a rotary and orbital motion of its 
own. 

The particles of the collective human body — ^indivi- 
duals — are as powerless for good by virtue of their iso- 
lated or individual action, as are the particles of the in- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARQUMEN TATIVE. 101 

dividual human body. Parts can do nothing generally 
good of themselves. It is only the harmonious action of 
the whole which can produce universal good, and thus, 
perfection of parts. If the individual human body was 
subjected to experiments analogous to those which have 
thus far been tried on the collective human body, disso- 
lution and death would instantly occur. Our quackish 
religious, legal moral and medical experimenting, is a% 
Tixuch as the combined power of collective man can pos- 
sibly stand without /(^toZ results. 

III. Th:it mankind are, and inevitably must be, con- 
nected. That until they are harmoniously connected 
for good, they must be antagonistically connected for 
evil. That until they mutually promote their own and 
each other's happiness, they must mutually produce their 
own and each other's misery. 

IV. That to punish poor, weak individuals in the 
real world, or threaten them with punishment in an im- 
aginary one, because their single forces do not individu- 
ally overcome obstacles which their combined force, ow- 
ing to false, inharmonious direction, throws in their way, 
is the heigth of injustice and cruelty. 

Proclaim, then, the principles of The Religion of 
Science, till mystery mongers, infidels, and demagogues 
see that their own perfect, and as good as eternal happi- 
ness depends on that of the whole human race. Then, 
" the kingdom of heaven" will come, as unexpectedly 
by the multitude, as " a thief in the night." 

Seo. 65. It is acknowledged by all, that " crime" 
can arise only from motives. To pretend that motives, 
when effective, are not motors as well, and that their 
subject acts voluntarily, is plain contradiction, and the 
most pitiable shystering and subterfuge. 

Let us briefly inquire how much any individual can 
have to do with the creation of the motives by which he 
or she is impelled, moved, incited, or " tempted." 

That individuals have nothing to do with the creation 
of their organisms, is conceded. That on the organism 

9 



102 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

depends the strength or weakness of internal or subjec- 
tive motives is conceded unawares, even by those who 
stubbornly deny it. They are often caught remarking, 
that such an one could safely be taken for a rogue, such 
another for a fool, and such another for an honest man, 
as far as they could be seen with a spy-glass. 

The only other motives or motors which operate on 
individuals, 'tis conceded, are external, or objective 
ones. Now, to what extent can an individual overcome 
these ? Certainly only to the extent of the infinitesimal 
proportion which individual force — the force of an ulti- 
mate atom of humanity — bears to that of all the rest of 
hnmanity and also to that of all coarser nature in the 
connection. If I had a soul to save from eternal torments, 
I would risk it on the truth of this assertion. 

When the effete remains of defunct ultranaturalism 
shall have been entombed, their pestiferous effluvia— Pro- 
testantism, demagogism, moralism, and " virtue" will be 
no more ; and then, people will hardly believe that folly 
could ever have gone the leni2 th of saying : — " Had I 
been you, I would not have acted thus ;" or that cruelty 
and injustice could ever have been brought to the perfec- 
tion of punishing individuals for yielding to the force 
generated in their systems/br not hy them; and for not 
overcoming obstacles surmountable only by the scientifi- 
cally combined force of the whole body politic, and the 
fully developed aid of all the rest of nature in the con- 
nection. 

If individual force is not as exactly proportioned to 
the force of all the rest of nature in the connection as 
individual bulk is proportioned to the bulk of all the rest 
of nature in the connection, the difference is at least too 
infinitesimal to admit of measurement ; yet such differ- 
ence constitutes the whole absolute independence of the 
individual, and is all for which any one can be justly held 
responsible. Here behold the difference between the 
injustice of punishing an individual because l\\^ force — 
the force which he actually created— did not bear a great- 
er or smaller proportion to that of all the rest of nature 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGTJMENTATIYE. 103 

in the connection, and between the injustice of punishinor 
him because his litlJc — the hulh which he entirely caused 
— did not bear a greater or smaller proportion to that of 
all the rest of nature in the connection. 

Yirtue and vice, we here see, are equally illusions — 
the mutual creations of ignorance and " malice" — the 
pretexts for favoritism and cruelty; for the rest, they 
serve but to befog the real question involved — that of 
human perfection on Earth. 

Honour is but a snare. Generosity is never what 
those who claim to possess it imagine it to be. It is al- 
most always as bad as ostentation, and not unfrequently 
as mean and contemptible as is the desire to make others 
feel inferior to us. Disinterestedness is simply jargon. 
Bravery and cowardice are but qualities as physical as 
are strength and weakness. The most consummate cow- 
ardice is the main ingredient in what popularly passes 
for the greatest bravery. As to truth^ why, life itself is 
now little better than one continuous lie ; and it is be- 
cause of the prevalence of real cowardice and actual ly- 
ing that mankind are so exceedingly sensitive when the 
epithets coward and liar are applied to them ; and all the 
glorious ado about liberty, is mere clap trap and bunkum ; 
for 'tis mathematically certain, that individuals can 
have no perceptible absolutely isolated freedom. Nor 
do people want such freedom ; what man really desires 
being, simply, happiness ; and the freedom to possess it 
in full, we shall show, ere w^e have done, can never be 
won by " independence," but through the alliance of the 
whole human race, systematically organized, and sustain- 
ed by the fally developed and most scientifically and ad- 
vantageously combined force of all the rest of nature in 
the connection. 

But all the clap-trap, humbug, and bunkum which is 
perpetrated in the name of liberty has some foundation 
in nature, as has every thing else, however jumbled up. 
What then is, or rather will be, human liberty ? We 
will answer bv an illustration : — 



lot THE EELIGIOK OF SCIENCE. 

Machinery works 2i% freely as it can, when it is in har- 
mony with itself, and when all which can properly be called 
friction is avoided. (If the seeming friction which arises 
from gravitation was avoided, the freedom of machinery- 
would be where human freedom would be, were indivi- 
duals absolutely independent) So, individuals will act 
as freely as they can understandingly desire to do, when 
they are as scientifically and as harmoniously adjusted to 
collective man and to all nature in the connection, (all 
being fully developed,) as are the wheels and spring of a 
perfect time-keeper or watch, to themselves and their en- 
vironment — as will be the parts to the whole of the per- 
fectly healthy human being that is to be. 

But perhaps I shall be asked : — " are not you, your- 
self, at this instant, individually striving to do right?" I 
answer : — " Forced, by external and internal impulses, I 
am striving to persuade the world to form itself into a 
grand corporation for carrying on the business of well- 
doing. My mental action in this respect may form, as it 
were, a nucleus [around which similar mentality (so to 
speak) may accumulate, 'till the thoughts of the most in- 
fluential leaders of mankind shall turn from immaterial- 
ity to actuality — from subjectivity as a primary, to ob- 
jectivity as coeval with space and duration — from ought 
to to how to — from the false impracticable religion and 
government of mystery and humbug, to the true, com- 
prehensible, practicable Religion and Government of 
Science.- And, doubt it not, the people will follow their 
leaders as naturally when they lead them rightly and 
intelligibly, as they have during the long reign of mys- 
tey and error; and as inevitably as the planets move 
round their Suns. 

What if, whilst the " virtuous," " moral," " disinter- 
ested" and, in short, old fogyistic generally, are " con- 
scientiously" striving, each on his or her "own hook" to 
be " honest,"and " do as thej^ would be done by," some 
scape-grace should discover how to counterfeit so perfect- 
ly, that banking, and the gambling credit system, and all 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 



105 



their superincumbent evils and woes would have to bo 
sent to the tomb of the things that were? 

What if some one should " feloniously" succeed in 
fio completely imitating the coinage even, that the only 
possible measure or certificate of value would have to 
be labor and skill ; and the only possible evidence of 
ownership, except of personal property, would have to 
be the stock-books, witnessed by competent persons, and 
kept by those who were trusty because they had no in- 
ducement to be false ? 

What if measures, contrary to precedent, and there- 
fore "felonious," should be unexpectedly taken, whereby 
wages-slavery and matrimonial bondage should be sent 
where Negromaniacy will surely be by John Brownism 
if not by milder means ? 

What if labor should incendiarily force capital and 
skill into an arrangement immeasurably more profitable 
to them than the best speculation which they have ever 
yet made — an arrangement which would insure them 
against all future dangers from labour at starvation pri- 
ces, and save them the expense of dragooning, hanging, 
imprisoning, and supporting human beings in idleness or 
worse, to the amount of $450,000,000 annually in the 
United States ? An arrangement, in short, which would 
make wealth really valuable and perfectly secure to 
mdividuals^ whether they were possessed of more or 
less? 

A system of religion and government, the very anti* 
podes of any that the world's leaders have hitherto 
dreamed of, is herein plainly revealed. I have di^scov- 
ered a new world ; and should not be astonished if the 
now most despised should compel the " Scribes , Phari- 
sees and hypocrites" of the " present evil world" to en- 
ter therein ; and thus demonstrate to even the weakest 
comprehension, that morality is but the fifth wheel of 
the car of progress, and that " virtue" is the rust on the 
axles of the other four. But I hope that " The Kingdom 
of Heaven" will be entered by milder means. At all 



106 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

events, it will not be my fault if abuses are heaped on 
abuses till '^ the violent take it by force." 

But 1 may be further asked : — '' Well, is not this striv- 
ing of yours your individual act ?" I reply : — " Circum- 
stances, internal and external — subjective and objective 
— compel me to think and write as I do. Were it possi- 
ble that I could be wrong in thus thinking and writing, 
is any thing plainer than that I ought not to be punished 
for it? 

But I am right, as sure as nature is not an abortion— 
a " fleeting show, for man's illusion given ;" I am even so 
highly right, that I am not fool enough to entertain any 
egotistic pride, or rather vanity in consequence of being 
right. Even should my efforts be the immediate cause 
of establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, I should 
not— nay, I could not experience any of that puffed up 
feeling which all who are elected to office manifest. 

"When the world comes to the full use of its senses, 
those capable of dealing with the most complicated ques- 
tions, and of entertaining the most enlarged views will, 
of course, have to attend to its directing ; and the spe- 
cially scientific, from physicists up to and including phy- 
siologists, will have to furnish them with the data to go 
by. The directors, discoverers, and operators will 
then form a scientifically and harmoniously adjusted 
whole, from which, the feelings of both contempt and 
meanness will equally be banished ; until when, popular 
{/overnment will be but synonymous with humbug and 
imposture, and offices will be obtained through gamb- 
ling and fraud, or dealt out as rewards for political "ras- 
cality" and meanness. 

He who has got but a glimpse of the extent to which 
human improvement can go, and who comprehends the 
nature of the causes whereby it is to be effected, cannot 
possibly despise his fellow-man ; and as to punishing 
" criminals," pshaw ; I would not have even demagogues 
or mystery-mongers punished. 

To attempt to educate all up to the same point — to 
try to teach all, alike, to see through or understand every 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 107 

thing, as do reformers of the " virtuous" and " moral" 
school, is to attempt the most hopeless of miracles, and 
to rebel against the plainest laws of nature. Every ped- 
agogue knows that by far the greatest number of his 
scholars had rather chop down trees or tame wild colts 
than study grammar, chemistry, physiology, &c. ; and if 
he is not underwitted himself, or blinded by prevailing 
follies, he also knows that such are as bright as are those 
of a different turn — as worthy of respect as are those 
whom nature has predisposed for different stations in her 
varied domain. 

I will here remark, that if in the course of this w^ork, 
I sometimes make use of the slang phrases of the '' vir- 
tuous," " moral" and vindictive — such phrases, for in- 
stance, as '* rascal," '^ knave," &c. without quoting them, 
I do not, nevertheless, feel the maliciousness which en- 
gendered them, and generally accompanies their use. 

"Ami my brother's keeper?" is popularly believed 
to have been the naive declaration of principles of the 
first murderer ; and to the full extent to which there is 
any meaning in the word criminality, those who similar- 
ly dispose of the great question of human brotherhood 
are chargeable, not only with all the murder, but with 
all the other crime which has ever been perpetrated. 
But the mutual guarantyism (not communism, but some- 
thing much further removed from it than is our present 
social structure) which fully enlightened selfishness will 
ensure, will banish both " virtue" and " vice," as the 
rising sun banishes the silly or horrible spectres 
which haunt sickly imaginations during the shades of 
night. 

Only when sociologians see that their function is 
wholly scientific, and get a glimpse of the great art of 
arts of human perfection which is to correspond to and 
crown the science of sciences, will humanity be delivered 
from those popular, sleek-tongued impostors who steal 
man's old opinions, furbish them over, and sell them 
back to those from whom they were pilfered, for new ; 
only then, will society be purged from a set of fools 



108 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

whom '^ a little learning" makes not only dangerous but 
so impudent as to dispise their fellow-men because they 
are not all capacitated to obfuscate history, forge laws^ 
scribble nature-murdering romances for the mediocrity- 
stuffing papers, turn tragedy to burlesqe on the stage^ 
humbug at elections, bamboozle in the Senate, play the 
Monkey at foreign courts, talk jargon, or reramp popu- 
larism in the pulpit, spout smartness at the bar, murder 
justice on the bench, and '' pour drugs, about which they 
know little, into stomachs, about which they know no- 
thing." 

The author of The Religion of Science feels that he 
spends his energies as he does, instead of in " making a 
fortune," because he cannot help so doing ; and he will 
here take occssion to remark, that were the Presidency 
(the office of purveyor or cat's paw general to legal rob- 
bers) of the United States, or even of the World itself 
offered to him through the ballot-box, he should feel com* 

{celled by disgust therefor to refuse it ; he would not re- 
inquish his present employment, even to become the 
largest bubble in all the scum which agitating the entire 
folly of the human race might bring to the surface. He 
had rather try, however unsuccessfully for the present, to 
make folly less popular, than to float ever so high on it 
in either the clerical or demagogical balloon. 

Sec. QQ. Clergymen : Don't you wish that it wonld 
pay as well to teach what rational beings could under- 
stand and be benefited by, as it does to befog the human 
intellect with mystery? I know well that some of you 
do, and that in consequence of pursuing your present 
course, you feel meaner than ought to^ those who tell for- 
tunes or pimp for a living. Your whole time and your 
immense advantages you abuse to the extent of making 
yourselves precisely as hurtful as you might be use- 
ful. Just in proportion as you divert attention from 
" things below" to "things above," do you postpone the 
very Millenium in which you pretend to believe. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARG3MENTATIVE. 109 

Some of you have considerable zeal to be moral 
heroes, but unfortunately coupled with so small a quan- 
tity of hero-material that salaryism carries the day. The 
preaching of such is a cross between burlesque and tra- 
gedy. Your attempts to intermingle cheerfulness with 
the preaching of the orthodox creed, resemble grinning 
at the corps at a funeral in order to divert the melancholy 
of the mourners. You attempt to introduce some show 
of sense into your discourses ; just enough to let the 
knowing ones understand that you are not the fools you 
pretend to be ; but " smart preaching stirs up your con- 
gations generally, only as the Galvanic, battery rouses up 
dead bodies ; as soon as the clerical or Galvanic battery 
is withdrawn, back go both the morally and physically 
dead to where they were before they had been experi- 
mented on. 

You preach " morality" and " virtue," and attempt 
thus to make this world preparatory for Heaven ; but 
after a trial of 1859 years, and at an expense of count- 
less millions, you have not succeeded in making it other 
than an actual Hell. 

Can't even shame arouse you to fulfil instead of abus- 
ing your high function ? When you taught the highest 
which man was capable of appreciating, though that was 
but merely initiatory to what he is now prepared to re- 
ceive, you were justly mightier than kings. Teach now 
the highest instead of the lowest — the intelligible instead 
of the incomprehensible. Expand, instead of contract- 
ing the infant mind, and be the head of veritably re- 
deemed humanity instead of the scorned tools of the 
foulest dregs of mankind — demagogues — who revel in 
auman misery through catering for the folly which your 
degrading, sense- destroying teaching causes to abound. 

A certain demagogue whose fame will be as lasting 
as will the reign of sham-law and kindred abuses, thus, 
in substance, eulogizes the clergyman of his parish, who 
fieems to have made up his mind to remain just the nul- 
lity with which demagogism is entirely satisfied ; — " I 
have watched you closely, my good fellow, and must do 



110 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

you the credit to say, that never in any hymn, prayer, 
sermon, or in any other way, have you, in the whole 
course of your ministry, taught or even hinted at any 
thing practical, or even intelligible. Your preaching 
has been a tissue of perfectly indefinite vagaries. In 
short, you have done your best to keep man amazed, stu- 
pified and blinded to that degree that myself and com- 
peers could pick their pockets to our hearts content, with- 
out their perceiving it." 

At the close of this eulogium, which was of course 
clothed in language which the gaping multitude under- 
stood crosswise, the orator presented the sermonizer with 
a large sum of money, and a splendid piano; which end- 
ed all, in this precious afi*air, with which the public were 
allowed to be edified. But is it too much to suppose that 
when the religious impostor next met the legal and po- 
litical quack in private, and that after the spontaneous 
burst of roguish laughter was over, and when each had, 
as well as he could, smothered the scorn he felt for the 
other, and reduced self-contempt back 'to its average con- 
dition, the politician patted the priest on the shoulder 
and said : — " Good fellow, continue to keep the attention 
of the rabble so directed towards " things unseen" that I 
can manage their intelligible affairs in my own way^ 
and I'll continue to go snacks with you. 

Sec. 67. Religion and government, until matters of 
science, must be but the arena of imposture and quack- 
ery. Never was delusion so fatal as the assumption that 
the church can be severed from the co- existing state, or 
that man, individually, can attend to his own governmenj;, 
except as to results. In comparison to this, the assump- 
tion that man could, individually, and without any the- 
ory or plan, furnish himself with every thing necessary 
to his comfort and happiness, from a pair of shoes to a 
comfortable mansion, and even a passage in a steamer 
across the Atlantic, would be good sense. 

" Democracy" is, rightfully, but a state of transition ; 
and can therefore be legitimate, only for the shortest pe- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENT ATIVE. Ill 

riod during which government can be transferred from 
worn out absohitism to positivism. 

Whenever decripid absolutism drops the reins of gov- 
ernment, experience has always shown, that even if they 
happen to fall into the hands of the well disposed and 
honest — the raisers of horses, sheep, hogs, cows, corn, and 
potatoes— the dealers in cotton or sugar — paints and oils 
— the house and ship builders — the tallow chandlers, 
soap-boilers or butchers — the electricians — the sailors — 
the stevedores — the pavers, &c., &c.; all these are at a 
loss what to do with the State's affairs ; and, from neces- 
sity, instantly drop the whole matter into the hands of 
constitution tinkers, sham law manufacturers and mon- 
gers, and, in short, those too idle and dissolute to pursue 
any useful occupation^ and who pass off their cunning, 
trickery and ^' smartness" for wisdom ; and place delu- 
sive, virtuously twanging impracticable abstractions or 
^' principles" where should be "the Science of Sciences ; 
and thus what need be but transient anarchy becomes 
chronic demagogocracy ; and the whole business of gov- 
ernment dwindles to contriving how to rob the nation to 
the last degree to which the most refined '* knavery" can 
cause man to submit; and those even one degree above 
Monkeys, but possessing all their trickery, can soon get 
the hang of all which now constitutes the business of 
governors, from a constable to a senator, foreign minister, 
or even president of the United States. 

Sec. 68. Scientifically organized collective man — 
perfected man — will give no more forewarning of his ad- 
vent to the generality of mankind, than does individual 
man, to any but the experienced. If a child four years 
old should see an individual launched into the world, it 
would think the whole process occurred then ; his igno- 
rance with respect to the preliminary of the process, the 
end of which he but saw, would exactly resemble the 
dullness of those who ask — '^ where is the sign of any 
real human progress ? Are not men now, as ever, knaves 
and fools — tyrants and slaves ? " But scientifically or- 
ganized collective man is in the womb of progress, and 



112 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

will be born apparently (to the multitude) all on a sud- 
den. After the long, slow, and unpromising preparation^ 
the stock very rapidly produces the ripe grain ; so will 
the coming of human perfection be. The scientific seer 
now beholds humanity balancing as it were, where it is 
more difficult to tell how it can long remain, then to point 
out how it might suddenly pass into a condition in which 
every individual wouM live long and happily enough ta 
be fulfilled — to secure the payment of all the drafts 
which nature, through his desires, has authorized him to 
make on her — and neither wish, nor need, to go to ano- 
ther world, after death, to get compensated for having 
had to run the gauntlet through this — to go to the 
chancery of a supernatural Heaven, the chief justice of 
which is said to be the author of, and indorser for, nature, 
to recover, with interest and cost of suit, the amount of 
the dishonoured or protested drafts of nature. 

Sec. 69. When the religion of combined ignorance 
led, that basis of all law — order — to some extent reigned; 
but it was little more than statical order, which dynarrh- 
ical order must constantly be attempting to supersede in 
human affairs ; thus causing anarchy in a more and more 
violent, or at le^i^t perjolcxiny form, until it does succeed. 
Dynamical order — the result of the leadership of com- 
bined science or knowledge, will rapidly displace both 
the acute anarchy of revolutions and insurrections, and 
the chronic anarchy of demagogocracy, whenever a res- 
pectable number of mankind's spiritual guides begin to 
teach the comprehensible and true, in the same manner, 
in the main, in which they now teach the mystical and 
false. 

Sec. 70. Man's natural yearning after perfection, 
it will bear repeating from every possible point of view, 
is a guaranty for its latent existence in, and eventual de- 
velopment through, nature; or else a proof that nature 
is that impossible absurdity — a one-sided, half thing 
leaning against vacuity. 



FUNDAMENTAL AN?) '^ARGUMENTATIVE. 113 

With respect to the mo^ disheartening theory of 
Mackintosh, (advanced in liis ''Electrical Theory of The 
Universe," a most valuable work, otherwise,) that the 
orbits of the planets are constantly diminishing, and that 
all the secondary planets will finally fall to their prima- 
ries, he certainly brings many indisputable facts tending 
to prove that all things are approximating towards this 
end. Still, we are without any experience on the sub- 
ject, and his facts no more prove what he claims that 
they do, than the fact that the human foetus starts from 
the apparently common nucleus of all animal nature— 
the vermiform — as a fish, proves that human beings are 
fishes. In a vast number of instances, nature pursues a 
course very difi'erent from the one which she, in due time, 
so abruptly takes as to disappoint or sorely chagrin the 
too specially — too short-sighted scientific — all who can- 
not take encyclopedical views. But hear the accom- 
plished author of the " Yestiges of The Natural History 
of Creation," on this head : — " Judging by anology, we 
might expect to see several varieties of the being homo. 
There is no other family approaching to this in import- 
ance, which presents but one species. The corvidse, our 
parallel in aves, consists of several distinct genera and 
sub-genera. It is startling to find such an appearance of 
imperfection in the circle to which man belongs, and the 
ideas which rise in consequence are not less startling. Is 
our race but the initial of the grand crowning type ? Are 
there yet to be species superior to us in organization, 
purer in feeling, more powerful in device and art? ^ * 
* ^ There is in this nothing improbable on other 
grounds. The present race, rude and impulsive as it is, 
is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things 
in the world ; but the external world goes through slow 
and gradual changes [he forgets how rapidly these chan- 
ges succeed each other as they approximate to thecon- 
Bummation of their object] which may leave it in timea^ 
much serener field of existence. There then may be oc- 
casion for a nobler type of humanity^ which shall com- 

10 



114 THE RELIGION OF SCIENOE, 

plete the geological circle on this planet, and realize 
some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the present 



Sec. 71. Except to the scientific seer, all develop- 
ment — all progress — has been a series of " impossibili- 
ties." When the Solar sj'stem was but an attenuated 
mass, (if such ever was its condition all at once) bad 
there been any old fogies in existence, it would have 
been pronounced 'impossible" for the celestial spheroids 
to be developed. At the granite epoch, vegetation would 
have been ''impossible." When only monsters, or the 
lowest animals existed, the future advent of even savage 
man was apparently "impossible.'' And from even now, 
*' impossibilities" will still continue to vanish, as the 
views of the few who lead the many enlarge, in spite of 
old fogyism, and consequently the views of the many 
alter, so as to give a fair field in which for combined sci- 
ence to work. The few", be it remembered, naturally 
shape the view^s which the many uncritically entertain, 
and as near as thev can, act in accordance with. 

Agriculture remained an " impossibility" among sav- 
ages, until a conception of its usefulness and practicabil- 
ity became so i>;eneral, that the crops of grain of those 
scientific enough to raise them w^ere respected — were 
protected from blind cupidity by enlightened selfish- 
Bess, to the extent that raisers could afford to take the 
risk. 

Even after a glimmering idea became entertained 
among savages, that crops of corn might be raised, and 
that johnnycakes would be a reliable resource when game 
failed, no doubt the old fogies were on hand with their 
" impossible ;" "praj'', Mr. Theorist, tempt not our wat- 
ering mouths with your Utopian johnnycakes, 'till you 
can tell us what will prevent our neighbours, who now 
fiteal or take by force even our Bear skins, from help- 
ing themselves to our corn before it gets out of the 
milk ? ' 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 115 

At length however the conviction of the superiority 
of the reliable johnnj^cake over more and more uncertain 
game, becomes general ; and cornfields are respected, nay, 
even protected, by the same selfish principle which, 
when but partially understood, would have ravaged 
them — by enliglitened^^i\vXQx^^\, Johnnycakes become 
an actuality and a particle of the Religion of Science 
has been nucleated. 

"Impossible" roads, are next built, by " Utopian'' 
public co-operation, and this same Utopianism has at 
length produced " impossible" public schools, to the great 
dismay of the old fogies and sticklers for extreme indi- 
vidual freedom, whose liberty is so trampled on thereby, 
that they are forced to pay for educating other people's 
children, instead of for hanging, imprisoning, and sup- 
porting in the alms house or as street beggars, a still 
greater number of them. 

But we come now to the last of the "impossibilities ;'* 
when this is conquered, all the conceivable will be pos- 
sible ; " Utopia" will be realized, and old fogyism will be 
stone dead. The last impossibility will be to harmonize 
antagonistic man ; to scientifically organize, for univer- 
sal co-operation, the whole human race ; develop and har- 
moniously connect all the laws of nature, and thus avail 
humanity of the beneficial, instead of the hurtful, oper- 
ation of their combined force. 

Whew ! Here's " impossibility," here's " Utopian- 
ism," here's madness, even ; eh? Well, this has got to be 
done, though, as sure as man is to live more than from a 
third to a fifth as long as it can be scientifically demon- 
strated that he is capable of living and would live, but 
for foolish, self-conceited, blind old fogyism ; as sure as 
he is to attain to the perfection of happiness which he 
unformly yearns after ; nay, so absolutely expects to ob- 
tain, that he pursues it, even by means absolutely impos- 
sible ; by means w^jich he unconsciously yet naively ac- 
knowledges to be impossible ; for through that most im- 
possible of all means — death, man believes he shall 
achieve that perfect happiness to obtain which, in life. 



116 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

and with all the conceivable to assist liim, he pronounces 

impossible and Utopian ! 

But the gospel ofnatnre's sufficiency— of man's latent, 
and therefore to be developed al mightiness — has begun 
to be preached; and when the mathematical certainty — 
that the perfect and substantially eternal happiness of 
every individual depends, under science, on that of all, 
becomes understood by man's leaders^ and of course, si- 
multaneously becomes a general conviction^ that true re- 
ligion — that highest law — according to which man, in all 
his transacticns, will operate for, instead of against man 
— will be put into active operation ; and from even the 
present point of view, such a condition of things surely 
appears less impossible than did the simple johnnycake 
from the most savage point of view. 

All nations, at similar stages of civilization, produce 
political and social phenomena strikingl^^ analogous ; and 
varying little, except according to climate, soil, food, and 
the general aspects of nature. This remark may seem 
rather nbrupt, but as our ideas are suggested from with- 
out, subjectivity must accept them as objectivity presents 
them. 

Sec. 72. The most general law of nature is gravi- 
tation. It is sufficiently broad to form the basis for all 
law ; for when the earth was considered flat, the great 
question was, to find out on what it was based ; having 
done which, it was tacitly admitted that all else could be 
accounted for. 

Now, as gravity is as inseparable from all the bodies in 
apparent space, as is their volume or amount, and is 
moreover that whereby they attain and preserve equili- 
brium, their only conceivable basis ; as it thus extends 
its power and influence even into physiology and intellec- 
tuality, it not only is the absolute, but supercedes the ne- 
cessity for, and the possibility of, any principle or imagi- 
noble existence, more absolute, It is sufficiently abso- 
lute for all the purposes for which a universal basis can 
be required. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 117 

Sec. 73. Human progress is generally divisible into 
three periods. The first is characterized by hlind faith. 
The second, by cunning, "rascality," humbug, clap-trap, 
hypocrisy, cant, and " smartness." The third will be 
characterized by the universality of that enlightened 
faith, which will rely for perfect results on perfected sci- 
ence, as it now relies on fractional science for partially 
good results. 

Perhaps it would be more just to class human exist- 
ence under two ages ; the age of credulity, and the age of 
certainty; between which, there must necessarily inter- 
vene the transition period, or age of reason, opinionism, 
skepticism, protestantism, constitutionalism, statute or 
sham-law, in short, gammon. 

In the first period, fear is the great moral motor. In 
the second, gross, short-sighted, suicidal, /(^Z^^'selfishness 
xud corruption rules. In the third period, refined, far- 
seeing, true selfishness — the esprit de corps will, under 
science, prevail. 

Chattel slavery naturally belongs to the first period 
of human progress; though, with respect to black skins, 
it is extended into the second. But it is too blunt, straight 
forward and unprofitable to find universal favor there, 
and has consequently been about half displaced by wages 
slavery, which can extort from its victims at least fiftj 
per cent, more unrequited toil, except in those local- 
ities where but the coarsest kind of labour can be 
carried on. 

The abominations which result from chatel-slavery 
are : — Severing, often at the auction block, the family ties 
of uneducated savages. The prostitution of the wives 
and dauo;hters of such. Occasional application of the 
lash to human beings and, in some rare instances, roast- 
ing them alive. 

The abominations which result from wages-slavery 
are : — Severing the family ties of civilized beings, to 
avoid, or oftener to mQVQ\y postpone starvation. The 
prostitution of educated wives and daughters to avoid or 
postpone starvation, or to enable them to dress so as to 



118 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

escape general contempt and ridicule. The sumniary 
arrest of such, by worse than brutal police officers — those 
blood hounds of wages slavery — who drive through our 
fashion and '' respectability"-thronged streets to gloomy 
prisons, females endowed with as keen a sense to insuU 
as are any of their sex, and expose them, to the sneers 
and odium of the blind supporters of a civilized barbar- 
ism which had made them what they are. 

The alms house, where human beings, many of them 
as refined as wages-slavery will permit them to become, 
are crowded together like cattle, and fed on swine's fare. 
Assylxims for children which wholesale illegitimacy im- 
pudently styles ^' illegitimate ;" where infants, often those 
of the now most refined parents are degraded so far be- 
low negro slave infants, that whilst the latter are valued 
at from $100 to $150 as soon as born, and cared for 
somewhat accordingly^ the former are considered so m.uch 
worse than useless, that they are put into the hands of 
nurses who treat them in such a shocking manner, that 
most of those who do not die in six months, get so dam- 
aged, that they would not sell for enough to pay the auc- 
tioneer's commission, if their skins w^ere as black as 
ebony. 

Prisons, where are sent, as fast as thej^ can be caught 
and by sham law" convicted, all who do not chose to die 
of privation, be worked to death, or who cannot, by rules 
laid down by successful, fashionable, and therefore dou- 
ble distilled cunning and rascality, or by good liich^ man- 
age to live in such style as to avoid the scorn, ridicule 
and contempt of those who batten on wages-slavery. In 
which prisons, privations to which chattel-slaves are rare- 
ly subjected, are the rule ; and in which, the most hor- 
rid tortures, often ending in death, are inflicted. 

Within three months from March 22, 1859, one man 
"of naturally mild disposition" has been slowly tortured 
to death ; and two had been shot d^ad and several wound- 
ed, because they had more goodness than tamely to see 
another of their number taken to the death-torture ; this 
is exclusive of flogging, yoking, showering, &c., &c., ad 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 119 

libitum^ in only one of our infernal prisons, of which "in- 
stitutions" we have some hundreds, well stocked with vic- 
tims, in the " Free States.'^' 

Abolitionists, like the opponents of superstition, must 
take far higher ground, before they either can^ or ought 
to^ succeed. 

Sec. 74. Human law can no more be " enacted," 
than can physical law; it must be discovered ; and the 
pre-requisites to this discovery, must be discoveries in 
physical and physiological law. The special sciences 
must be the basis for the science of sciences or The Re- 
ligion of Science; and all sociology not based thus i& 
false ; and not only creates, but renders chronic, .that dis- 
order — that anarchy — which it is the function of the true 
law, which scientific laboratories alone reveal, to remedy. 
False religion, sham law, bogus morality, and that 
most " vicious" of all moral nuisances — " virtue" — defeat 
their professed aim to the extent of producing a state of 
things so damnably evil, that periodical war in civilized 
countries, and the constant practice of infanticide in bar- 
barous ones, have to be had recourse to ; and the abom- 
ination of abominations — war — actually does aflford re- 
lief! Relief from a condition of things engendered under 
the auspices of supernaturalism and its consequent gov- 
ernment, virtue, and morality. 

Nature, when fully developed — when all her laws are 
manifested, will determine the number of inhabitants 
which the earth can sustain in perfect bliss ; as science 
has already sufficiently proved ; which number will be 
immensely greater than it has ever yet been, even at the 
point where war or infanticide had to be resorted to, in 
order to thin off superfluous humaiiity — to slay or pre- 
vent paupers, constrained idlers, unlucky traders, and 
duplicate laborers? 

But instead of studying the laws of nature, simple, 
Bcientiiic and artistic, in all their complications, varieties, 
and combinations, man has arrogantly forged what he 
absurdly calls laws, and is engaged in the vain and 



120 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

ridiculous attempt to coerce nature into obedience to 
them. 

Owing to this stubborn and absurd war on nature? 
more than nine tenths of man's rightful self and by 
far the best part of both manhood and womanhood, are 
as repressed as is the life of serpents in the winter time; 
with this vast difference in favor of the serpents, that 
they do not feel the repression, whereas human beings 
constantly do. 

Constraint but engenders commensurate falsehood. 
Instead of trying to corrector, still worse, to sujppress the 
natural passions, as do religious, political, and moral 
quacks, the means, and combinations of means, for their 
satisfaction, should be studied. Just when, against any 
law of nature, man imagines his law is about to succeed, 
nature disappoints him, and always with a vengeance 
proportioned to the importance of the law which is at- 
attempted to be subjugated, and to the progress which 
has seemingly been made in its subjugation. The main 
reason why man is afflicted with so many more diseases 
than is any lower animal, is, the ennui and constant men- 
tal torture which attempting to subdue his natural de- 
sires inflicts on him. This alone, undoubtedly shortens 
his life a full half, besides rendering the remainder all 
but useless. 

Mankind, Can you, as rational heings^ conceive of a 
religious governmental and moral system more infernal 
than that, to enable you to endure which, requires 
nerve-stimulation and sense-stupefaction to the frightful 
extent which the incalculable amount of health-destroy- 
ing tea, coffee, Silcohollsiud toiacco consumed, indicates, 
and which is rapidlj'' invoking the more complete oblivi- 
ousness which swiftly-destructive Opium and suicidal 
Hasheesh produce? How dare you insult and blaspheme 
the only Almighty Power which you can conceive of, by 
pronouncing the Hell which you either positively or ne- 
gatively, either through headlong action or through sheer 
laziness produce, that power's ultimatum ? 



FUIIDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 121 

Our laws for regulating the sexual relations, are os- 
tensibly to prevent promiscuous sexual intercourse. Now, 
this is a most pitiable subterfuge; for, in the first place, 
such laws do not prevent such intercourse, but only force 
it into such irregularities, as to cause all the resulting 
mischief. The truth is, man is (I had almost said crimi- 
nally) ignorant of how to provide for the consequences 
(children) ot freedom in love; and therefore drives such 
freedom into ways and means which are, indeed, to a 
great extent, unproductive of children, but produce, 
instead, the lowest human degradation, the most horrible 
of diseases, and an untold amount of secret wrong, which, 
by being occasionally discovered, instigates the bloodiest 
assassinations. Behold the vengeance of nature, which 
she executes on those who undertake to make laws for her 
to go by. 

If one jot or tittle of nature's laws should be altered, 
all possibility of man's perfection, would be at an end ; 
but the more we become acquainted with nature, the more 
we shall become reconciled to her, till, finally, we become 
perfectly so ; but the longer we war against her, the more 
dreadfully shall we get beaten. 

Imagine, for a moment, the human race in that state 
of passional, intellectual, and of course physiological 
apathy, to which false religion, sham-law, bogus moral- 
ity, and "self-denying," suicidal "virtue" would reduce 
it. But we must pass over the mutilations which false 
religion, bogus morality and " virtue" would inflict on 
human nature, as these would leave nothing at all for 
sham law to work upon ; and the first article of sham law^ 
would also do man's business up with a round turn, could 
it really carry out its ostensible aim, — did it inflict the 
punishment of death on every real murderer ; for there 
is not a human beino; in-existence, who is not, owine^ to 
the false position in which false institutions place him, 
at least an accessary to murder or manslaughter hefore 
thefact 

But let us suppose that the marriage-law, and all laws 
auxiliary thereto, could be, for twenty-four hours, sue- 



122 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

cessfally enforced ; that out of indissoluble monogaraic 
marriage, there was no possibility of sexual intercourse. 
Does any sane person suppose that every one of those 
" laws" would not, at the end of the said twenty-four 
hours time, be trampled out of existence, regardless of 
consequences ? 

Ma. kind are, owing to the false relations in which 
they stand to each other and to all else in the connection, 
the victims of two of the most amiable tendencies of 
their nature. Tendencies, without which, human nature 
would not be endurable for an instant. These tendencies 
are, love of gallantry and coquetry, and love of the beau- 
tiful and elegant. 

But 'tis our ignorance of the laws of these, which 
makes us their victims. But the taste for magnificence 
and the love of pleasure will not always supply '• moral" 
texts for the apostles of "virtue," " self-controll," medio- 
crity, and contented dissatisfaction. We have, oh how 
much worse than vainly, spent more money to hire reli- 
gious and moral quacks to preach down extravagance, 
and in getting sham laws manufactured to put down gal- 
lantry, than would be necessary, if scientifically applied^ 
to establish the means for the perfect satisfoction, unat- 
tended with any evil consequences, not only of the hu- 
man taste for gallantry and elegancy, but also of every 
desire of which humanity is capable of conceiving. 

Religious, political, social and moral quacks ! You 
would shrink, appalled, at the horrible dullness which 
would prevail, if your efforts were crowned with success ; 
if you could banish from human nature that love of gal- 
lantry and that taste for the elegant w^hich now, owing 
to our ignorance of their laws, impoverishes the men, 
prostitutes (either wholesale or retail — for life or by the 
job) the women, and periodically bankrupts all civilized 
nations. 

"Ah," says the popular suffriige radical : "give to 
the head of each isolated household, 160 acres of land in 
some State in the wilderness, far removed from "the op- 
pressor's wrongs, the rich man's contumely," and the cor- 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AKGUMENTATIYE. 123 

rnpting influence of luxury, and you shall have a speci- 
men of a free and virtuous people." 

Well, and by means of what newly invented tortures, 
would you repress the first risings of the luxurious dis- 
position? For the instant a woman succeeded in wear- 
ing with impunity, even a bright pink calico frock, or a 
boy was allowed to play on a jews-harp, don't you see that 
the very foundation would have been laid for a luxury 
which would soon grow to be as rank as it is anywhere? 
And by means of what tortures would you repress, within 
the bounds of monogamic marriage, that gallantry, 
but for which, even that " holy" institution itself would 
die out? 

The joys which gallantry and luxury will cause when 
their law^s are developed, wnll be proportioned to the mis- 
ery which now results from our ignorance of those laws, 
and our consequent attempts to smother our natural, 
most important, and therefore, happily, most imperious 
and too-powerful to be cocquerred passions, 

jj But, say our virtuosos, we must not go to extremes ; 
we must preserve a just medium. Say you so still? 
Well, try it a while longer, then ; and when you succeed 
in effecting a permanent compromise between your de 
sires and their satisfaction, when you prove that nature 
excites desires, and the most impetuous ones too, to 
peaceably reinain AaZf satisfied, call me a fool. JIalf sa- 
tisfied, did I say ? Wh}^, man's compromises with his 
passions have never yet availed the most lucky individu- 
als of their gratification by nine-tenths. 

The most imao^inative painter could now but faintly 
sketch the magnificence and voluptuousness w^hich wilt 
reign unalloyed hy evil consequences^ when the Religion 
and Government of Science establishes that true Higher 
Law, in accordance w'ith which, man's w^hole nature will 
be fulfilled. But as to the dullness which the success of 
present religious, legal, and rtioral means would produce 
— a mop saturated with mud , and drawn over a rough 
board by an idiot, would do its picture full justice. 



124 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

Until humanity obtains the fall satisfaction of its un- 
depraved passions, it will continue to smother the horrible 
sense of their su^ypression^ in tea, coffee, bad rum, worse 
tobacco, and swiftly destructive opium ; and fornication, 
adultery, prostitution, and tippling will thrive, in spite of 
Maine-laws or any other laws of that ilk. And until au 
equitable adjustment of the claims of labor skill and ca- 
pital, and a scientific elaboration of the latent resources 
of nature shall enable all to obtain as much wealth as 
they are capable of appreciating the use of, theft, rob- 
bery, swindling and murder, both wholesale and retail 
will be rife, and that double distilled iniquity — ^that most 
abominable of all crime- -punishment, will add its hor- 
rors. 

The human virile powers are now sometimes fretted 
into sickly sensitiveness, utterly prostrated by self-abuse, 
half deadened by abstinence, palsied by constraint, or 
partially or wholly destroyed by diseases conseqtient on 
the quackish manner in which, legally morally and phy- 
sically, the sexual relations are fooled with. 

Man is engaged in attempting to confine amorousness 
within bounds which there is no disputing that nine- 
tenths of the human race are simultaneously longing 
to burst. Is not this insanity ? Is not the world now an 
immense mad-house? Oh, that the married, or even 
those who are making up their minds to become such — 
who are " courting"— could but read each other's thoughts. 
How often would not — "I love you of all others" dwin- 
dle to — " I suppose I must take the risk of your alliance 
for fear of having to do worse?" This must be so till 
human beings are so perfected that love will be univer- 
sally reciprocal. 

Human beings are now no more in comparison 
to what they are capable of becoming, than are 
Ourang-Outangs in comparison to human beings at pre- 
sent. In the perfect future, there will be different styles 
of human beauty, such as the fair or black haired ; the 
blue or black eyed-, brunettes or the fair skinned. But 
there will be none homely ; none, even, not absolutely 



FCr^^DAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATIVE. 125 

enchanting; and the different styles of perfection will 
constitute just the variety requisite to keep love always 
alive, and universally reciprocal ; and the sexual delights 
of even Ninon de L'Enclos and her lovers, or of Antony 
and Cleopatra, will sink into insignificance in comparison 
with those which will be common to every one under the 
reign of the perfection which The Religion and govern- 
ment of Science will inaugurate and sustain. 

Impossible, eh, old Fogy? But spinning-jennys, pow- 
er looms, sewing-machines, printing-presses, steam-en 
gines, electric telegraphs, floating palaces — Savoy cabba- 
ges from something like mullen stalks, strawberries thrice 
as large as, and proportionably sweeter than, wild ones, 
double roses from hedge-roses, luscious pippins from 
something like crabb-apples, blood-horses worth $1000 
each, from wild ones not, in themselves, worth the catch- 
ing ; these, and a host of other things, are not " impossi- 
ble." Yet savage men shivered, and starved, and toma- 
hawk'd each other for untold ages, unconsciously amidst 
the requisites not only for these, but for improvements 
to which these are but initiatory. Poor Old Fogy ! Is 
complete, whole, self consistent, perfect man, the only 
impossibility ? 

Anatomy, physiology, and, in fact all the departments 
of science, show that the human organism is capable of 
lasting from three to five times longer than it, at present 
does ; and there is no question, in the minds of those not 
stone blind through prejudice, that what is most impu- 
dently called marriage, fearfully shortens human exist- 
ence, and prevents the human race from attaining that 
physical and intellectual perfection of which they are 
capable. 

Nature declares nothing more emphatically than that 
with precious few exceptions, men and women are as 
fond of change in sexual matters as in every thing else 
except that ho\y friendship which marriage, more than 
any thing else, destroys ; and that attempting to force 
amorous constancy, has the effect of destroying the con- 
stancy which tender affection would otherwise maintain, 



126 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

and to make men and women loathe and* hate each other, 
even to the poisoning-point' — nay, even to that horrid de- 
gree which causes them to torment each other to death ; 
to murder each other through cruelty too refined for the 
clumsy law or the minutest chemical tests to take cogni- 
zance of. The assassin who resorts to that sure, and 
most murderous of all means — mental anguish, always 
escapes hanging. 

'Tis known that even vegetables and grains cannot be 
forced into constancy to the same lands, year after year ; 
that attempting to thus force them will " run them out ;" 
and improving the breed of cattle and horses, through sex- 
ual inconstancy, has become a science, which might be car- 
ried to far greater perfection, if the object was to perfect 
the subjects of it for their own sakes, instead of to min- 
ister to the wants, and even the depravities of their own- 
ers ; for the cruelty of castrating animals will not be 
practiced when man is no longer depraved. 

Amorousness is a natural taste ; and when individual 
responsibility for the care of progeny is done away with, 
and when projperty shall have no connection with 
loving^ differing in love-tastes will not sever friend- 
ship. 

What we now call splendour — luxury — magnificence 
— are, even apart from the dreadful means by which they 
are procured, the perplexity by which they are attended, 
and the frail tenure by which they are held, absolutely 
pitiable, in comparison to what scientifically organized 
collective man, and fully developed nature will furnish 
every one with. 

Even should labor-saving machinery do no more than 
it now does ; (and it will eventually do nearly all labor, even 
to tending itself) if the duplicate labor and constrained 
idleness which now wastes nine-tenths of human power, 
were done away with, as they eventually will be, man- 
kind would, with half their present pains, procure for 
themselves nearly four times the amount of luxuries 
which they now enjoy. Enjoy ? why, we can now form 
but a faint conception of the luxury, magnificence, and 



FUNDAMENTAL AND AKGUMENTATTVE. 12^7 

pleasure, which will characterize the full triumph of The 
Religion of Science and Government in accordance 
therewith. Then, man will look on what we consider 
magnificence, with incalculably more pity than we be- 
hold what the wild, uncouthly painted and decorated 
Indian calls such. 



RATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF WORSHIP. 

Sec. 75. Man naturally loves to adore woman. "Wo- 
man as naturally loves to be adored by man. The man 
who has not at least one goddess, "a^d t he woman 
who has not even a single worshipper, suffer the crudest 
martyrdom. 

The stomach requires satisfaction in order that life 
may be simply retained. Man's passion to give, and 
woman's passion to receive, adoration, requires satisfac- 
tion in order that life may be worth retaining. 

Where woman is most worshipped, there humanity is 
most advanced, and vice versa ; and when our race is 
perfected, man will be in a constant ecstacy caused by 
giving, and woman in a perpetual thrill of delight caused 
by receiving adoration. The few who now adore or are 
adored, will bear me testimony that, even between acts of 
adoration, the luxury of it is unconsciously constant ; that 
the rapture naturally resulting from man's kneeling and 
woman's permitting him to kneel to her, and to lavish 
voluptuous kisses on her very feet does not cease to thrill 
for days ; nay, years, of unavoidable absence. 

Reader, you may perhaps have observed women 
whose beauty did not strike you as remarkable to sud- 
denly grow enchanting. Enquire into the cause ; and, 
my life on't, you will, in nine cases out of ten, (if your 
inquiries are successful) find that such women have had 
the extraordinary good fortune to fall in with, and attract 
men who were gifted with refined feeling and discern- 
ment enough to worship them. 



128 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

But have not many of the beautiful women and girls 
"which you have known so suddenly lost their bloom a 
year or two after marriage, as to strike you with aston- 
ishment—sometimes even with horror? Mark well; 
these have been chained to partners too unenlightened, 
or too supernaturalistically savageized by *' wives be obe- 
dient to your husbands," to comprehend the natural phil- 
osophy of woman-worship. 

To adore and be adored is an absolute necessity of 
man's and woman's nature ; and I will venture to affirm 
that when society is so organized that the sexes can, un- 
constrainedly, resign themselves to amorous voluptuous- 
ness and to the extatic bliss of worshipping and being 
worshipped without evil consequences, life's lease will, 
from that cause alone, receive an extension of at least a 
quarter part more than its present term ; and oh, what 
an inestimable additional value will conscious existence 
be invested with. 

Woman will cease to be vain in consequence of being 
adored, as soon as she understands the natural philosophy 
of worship. It is because worship has been slavishly 
bestowed on the personification of the worst of the human 
qualities magnified to infernalism^ that it has been con- 
sidered a degrading, or at least a pusilanimous thing, 
and has therefore been but very stintingly, and never 
in the right spirit, bestowed on its legitimate object- — 
woman. 

A very few have no taste for sexual delights ; a few 
others may not desire to vary them. Excepting these 
rarities, I ask every man and woman — " Do you not 
heartily wish that matters could be so arranged that you 
could, without injuring either the feelings or the interests 
of others, enjoy a continual succession of " honey moons," 
instead of only a single short one during a life-time ?" I 
would bet the salvation of my immortal soul, (if I knew 
I had one) that if superstition, hypocrisy, and poverty- 
stricken prudence were out of the question, your unani- 
mous answer would be most emphatically yes. 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGtJMENTATIVBj. 129 

Nature, in whatever department she is buffeted, al- 
ways becomes detestible in proportion as she would 
otherwise have been loveable ; and so long as indissolu- 
ble monogamie marriage continues to slap nature in the 
very face, or seat of beauty — to buffet the passions — na- 
ture will ^frown, and scowl, and grimace, in the shape of 
prostitution, wife and husband poisoning or worrying to 
death, and all else that is detestable or ugly. 

But what will become of the family-ties and the home- 
affections, without indissoluble marriage? Are, then, 
family-ties dear because they are so circumsGribed and so 
tightly and onerously drawn, or do we submit to have 
them thus drawn, only because they are so dear? — be- 
cause, in fact, humanity is, when closely connected, so 
dear to humanity, even now ? With what bliss would 
the family-ties thrill our bosoms if the whole world was 
an equitably, harmoniously, and of course scientifically 
regulated family ? Mind, now, I don't mean Commun- 
ism, but that which is vastly further removed from it 
then is our present sociological hotch-potch. 

Do you love home because it is so little and inconve- 
nient ? Is it an absolute pleasure and good to have home 
so very restricted, and to have to defend it from the in- 
roads of the members of other homes, as the Barons and 
their retainers had to defend their castles during the 
Feudal Ages ? or is it only a miserable*necessity to which 
you reluctantly and grumblingly submit ? Come, now, ye 
monogamists, answer me truly. 

Woman, unlike man, is but little, if any, inclined to 
worship. How perfectly awkward and unnatural are all 
her attempts at extempore prajang? In the Middle Ages, 
when the human disposition to worship was most abused, 
it peopled the deserts with male hermits exclusively ; 
and if women sometimes sought, instead of being fright- 
ened or forced into, the cloister, such instances were most 
rare exceptions ; nor did women, like men then torture 
themselves in order to propitiate the horrible object of 
orthodox Christianism's adoration ; and women now at- 
tend Church from any motive but that of worship, 



130 THE BFXIGION OF SCIENCE. 

unless that may be called worship which is extorted by 
terror. 

Woman is the type of the beautiful, as man is that of 
strength. Violating natm^e to the extent of denying 
women their rights, has made them attempt to turn poli- 
ticians; but the type of all that is lovel}^ has, fortunate- 
ly, been able to be transformed but very imperfectly 
into the most abominable which even man could be de- 
graded to. 

When the true religion — The Religion of Science — 
supersedes all false religions, the type of the beautiful in 
nature, instead of that of the horrible, will be the object 
of both private and public worship ; even the destruct- 
ionists of the French Revolution had a glimpse of this 
much, of true religion. The goddesses of Paganism were 
suggestive of the truth of what I have advanced, and the 
worship of the Virgin in the Christian phase of Pagan- 
ism is quite significant of the naturalness of woman wor- 
ship. 

Kneel proudly, then, at the feet of her whom you 
love, if you are so fortunate as to be permitted so to do, 
and there expound to her the philosophy of your attitude; 
and, my life on it, you will double her beauty ; and when 
your impassioned, up-turned glance meets hers, her per- 
haps before dim eye will sparkle with an astonishing 
briliancy, and radiate back, to the point of ecstacy, the 
joy with which you fill her to overflowing. 

Women suffer as much from not being adored, and 
men from not adoring them, as do plants and flowers from 
being deprived of light. Yet worship has alas, thus far, 
been (and is likely to be for a while longer) mainly as- 
sociated with degradation and cowardly fear ; still, the 
bravest of men have been woman-worshipers. 

From the time husbands cease to adore their wives, 
and wives cease to desire the adoration of their husbands, 
true marriage has ceased between them ; and the penalty 
for their continued adulterous intercourse is, that their 
lives become a continual crucifixion ; and such abomina- 
ble unions engender all that is deplorable both physically 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGJMENTATIVE. 131 

and moraUj. Children are begotten depraved, of such 
marriages. Woman suffers much more than man from 
the constrained sexual relations which cause passional 
starvation ; but in accordance with nature's law of com- 
pensation according to service rendered or the contrary, 
woman transmits the dreadful effects of her sufferings to 
posterity. The greatest want of the world is, the condi- 
tions requisite to amorous freedom. 

Sec. 76. The religion of mystery was the germ — 
the embryo — of the Religion of Science ; and we cannot 
lose sight of this, without forgetting, the vital truth that 
it is the function of the latter to accomplish what the 
former — raised a glimmering idea of — human perfec- 
tion. 

Show me your religion, and I will show you your gov- 
ernment. Show me your government, and I will show 
you your religion. Religion is the theory, to which gov- 
ernment is unavoidably the practice ; the chronic anar- 
chy called democracy, therefore has a corresponding 
anarchical religion — the religion of protestantism — its 
very name is a mere jumble of contradiction, as the cha- 
racteristic without which religion would not answer to 
the etymology of its name is its catholicity — its univer- 
sality. Religion is a common ligature, tie, or bond of 
union in its very nature; and all talk about the benefits 
arising from a plurality of religions in the same state, 
or about the propriety or even possibility of a separation 
of church from state, is simply the twaddle, humbug and 
clap-trap of infidels, protestants and demagogues. But 
supernatural ism's attempt, arbitrarily to coerce man into 
stone hlind unanimity of religious faith, we must not for- 
get, gave rise to all the absurdities which have been per- 
petrated in the name of the 'right to differ in opinion in 
religious matters. Here, again, behold nature's retalia- 
tion on those who attempt to make laws for her to 
go by. 

The Religion of Science, by an appeal to the under- 
standing, will not only satisfy natural passion or feeling, 



132 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

in this tangible sphere, but it will ensure, without res- 
orting to arbitrary means, a unanimity of faith. And 
as soon as the all-important truth — that religion and gov- 
ernment are The Science of Sciences and Art of Arts, 
which must be under the supervision of the most gifted 
and thoroughly prepared few — is taught in Sunday- 
schools and Churches, instead of that science of demagog- 
ocracy — Protestantism, the sure foundation of human 
perfection will have been laid. 

Science, in its very nature, excludes difference of opi- 
nion ; and the most stubborn advocates for the perma- 
nency of such difference, renounce opinion in favor of 
mere fi actional science. Men do not quarrel for the 
right to Icnow a thing to be true, but for the supposed 
right to guess it to be so, and to bore, irritate, and befog 
each other with their blind conjectures, where combined 
science can alone avail. 

Sec. 77. " Popular government" is the theory, of 
which combined rascality is the practice ; the science, of 
which concentrated humbug is the art. It is as much 
worse than absolutism, as moving \?^pro tein^ worse than 
being in a house which has any kind of a roof. Popu- 
lar government is a crisis, which demagogues and their 
tools — the Protestant clergy, attempt to make chronic in 
all its virulency, 

Demagogccracy has, in the United States, arrived at 
that point in abomination where 'tis difficult to determine 
whether it, or even Asiatic despotism can tyrannize with 
most effrontery, or degrade its victims lowest ; and 'tis 
an unsettled question, whether demagogues cannot inflict, 
with impunity, even on those in whose veins runs the 
Anglo Saxon and Celtic blood of the Puritan Fathers, 
not only as ruinously expensive wrongs as does the mcst 
barbarous despotism, but also indignities, insults, and 
outrages, sooner than submit to which, even the lowest 
castes in India would rebel. 

One of the chosen representatives of that out and out 
*' democracy" which has decreed that the highest law 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENrATIVE. 133 

may be one thing to day and its opposite to-morrow, as 
the ever changing ijpse dixit of popular folly backed by 
majority force, and directed by its sycophantic flatterers 
may determine, and that the acme of liberty consists in 
the right of the strongest to enslave (either by means of 
purchase of body or purchase of the bodie's time and 
life^ the weakest, and further consists in the right of the 
affirmative majority to bayonet the minoritv into assist- 
ing th^m to carry out their measures ; I say, one of the 
representatives of even such perfect " popular sover- 
eignty" as this, has, wdth impunity, within ashort period, 
and in the very capitol of the home of the refugee from 
foreign oppression^ shot one of his own constituents, 
an Irish waiter, dead, lor not obeying his high dem- 
agogocratical mightinesse's commands quite promptly 
enough. 

Another of these specimens of the moral scum which 
rises to the surface of agitated human folly has also in 
the very capitol of " the land of the free and the home 
of the brave," openly murdered one of the same kidney, 
under circumstances which would undoubtedly have con- 
signed any one not a successful demagogue, or an effec- 
tive tool of such, to the gallows. Yet even though it was 
apparent enough that there was a reason other than the 
more popular one plead in justification, no one doubted, 
from the first, that he would escape, as he did, with im- 
punity ; so imperially above even the sham which the 
vulgar have to accept from their hands as law, are 
these representatives and apostles of "the largest li- 
berty." 

If the trial of this fellow had been a special attempt 
to show up the absurdity of all prevailing legal and judi- 
cial proceedings, and to " go ^^" in respect to all that could 
mock justice, nullify good sense, and disparage man, it 
could not have been better planned. 

And these creatures of all grades in the political scale, 
though they profess to be the servants of the people, are 
in the practice, as the records of our Pandemonium daily 
testify, of w^ontouly assaulting and maltreating whomso- 



134 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



ever they please, and always with impunity, so far as the 
"law" which they themselves manufacture or administer 
is concerned; their brother justices / often refusing even 
to take the depositions of complainants against them ; 
and even grand juries, being composed of tax payers^ 
refusing, in despair, to indict, in order to save the expense 
of the ^lekeumg farce which they well know would other- 
wise be enacted, under the name of a trial. 

Public work is not only farmed out for four or five 
times its value, but the figures in the contract are often 
erased, double their amount inserted, the whole thing 
clearly proved to the public, who grumble and pay the 
money notwithstanding, well knowing that no power ex- 
ists before whom a prosecution for forgery in the case 
would end in any thing but a tedious and most disgusting 
farce, the expense of playing which, by other just such 
knaves, the public would also have to pay. 

State governments have even re-issued, to the amount 
of millions, state bonds which had been once paid, and 
pocketed the proceeds with impunity, of course, as the 
chief thief in the case, legally and constitutionally pos- 
sessed the pardoning power. 

Even the decisions of the courts of '' civil law," are 
often based on party interests. 

Ifow, the only way in which such tyranical practi- 
ces as these can be successfully inflicted even by 
Hindo despots on the lowest orders of Asiatics is, by ed- 
ucating those who are to be the victims, in the belief that 
they are naturally^ and therefore rightfully^ and even 
by the ordination of the Gods^ subjects for such prac- 
tice. Thephysical pain, and the expense^ are therefore 
about all which the victims of Asiatic despotism feel. 
Whereas demagogocracy educates its victims, at least its 
white ones, in the belief that all men are equal before 
" God," nature, and the "law." This creates in them 
the keenest sensibility to wrong, insult, and outrage, 
which are then dealt out to them as unalloyed and, thus 
far, with greater impunity, than they have ever been by 
Pagan, Mahomedan, or even Hindo despots. And were 



FUNDAMENTAL AND ARGUMENTATTVE 135 

human heads as plenty in the United States, and parti- 
cularly in that part of the "model Republic" called Kan- 
sas, as they were in Asia at the time of Ghengis Khan, 
demagogocracy might ere this, have had its pyramid of 
Anglo Saxon, Celtic, Galic, and Teutonic skulls. 

These scourges of the human race — demagogues — 
they who flatter and delude "the Sovereign People" as 
court-sycophants and favorites do monarchs — (and as 
much more mischievously as it is worse for a multitude 
of sovereigns to be duped than it is for a single one to 
be,) though, in the main, the ratings of the foulest dregs 
of the populace, have the audacity to set themselves 
higher above even the faint shadow of law, the authority 
of which they force others to recognise, than ever have 
any despots who professedly reigned by right divine. 

In Philadelphia, one of " The Sovereign People" was, 
by one of those political nuisances who profess to be The 
Sovereign People's servants, subjected to a long and drea- 
ry imprisonment, in direct violation of even " constitutir 
onaV^ law ; and even that last hope of the legally oppress- 
ed — the writ of habeas corpus — was sneered at. 

Corruption is scarcely attempted to be disguised, in 
contracting for public works, and in enacting special laws 
for the benefit, at the public expense, of corporations ; 
and even individuals, provided they have done party ser- 
vice, or can pay roundly, are thus favored. 

In no less than two of the Sovereign States of " free 
America," and in many of the largest cities, the chief 
officers of government have been convicted of crimes, 
a hundredth part of which, would have consigned any 
one, not a successful demagogue, or an effective instru- 
ment and supple tool of such, to ignominious imprison- 
ment, if not to the gallows. 

In order to reward those who do its nastiest party 
lobs, demagogocracy not only creates sinecureships in so 
reckless a manner as to outdo Austrian despotism, but 
has even undertaken wars against weaker neighbouring 
nations and fitted out armaments against distant prorin- 
ces, which have cost hundreds of millions, in order to 



136 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

bestow large tracts of land, and army contracts, on its 
minions; and an attempt has recently been made, and 
barely failed for the present, under the transparent sub- 
terfuge of purchasing additional territory, to place thirty 
millions of dollars at the disposal of the chief dispenser 
of the spoils of a nation, which is regularly subjected 
to conquest, and fresh spoliation by the victors, every four 
years Can these things last? Is infernalism nature's 
end snd aim ? Will the ^' sovereign people" persist in mis- 
taking that for freedom at which they have always grum- 
bled, and which, at length, extorts from them one contin- 
ous groan? 



II.I.USTRATIVE 



THE TWO EXPERIMENTS : 

OR 

THE "PEACTIOAL" FAILURE, AND THE "IM- 
POSSIBLE" SUCCESS. 

A VISION. 

In a vision, an immense dancing saloon, full of peo- 
ple, seemed to spring into existence. 

After a moment's pause, in the all hut utter bewilder- 
ment consequent on the first introduction of nature's in- 
animate and animate — objective and subjective intellec- 
tual faculties to each other, each individual of the assem- 
bly began to sing, or rather scream ; and, simultaneously, 
to try to dance. 

As little except mutual collision resulted, the strong- 
est {of course the strongest) adopted the "practical mea- 
sure," as they were pleased to term it, of knocking down, 
and trampling flat under foot, all whose dancing inter- 
fered with theirs ; provided, of course, that the " offend- 
ers" could not manage to dodge the blows which were 
aimed at them ; which, happily, they soon learned how 
to do, and with a dexterity which guaranteed the Terpsi- 
chorean race from being quite exterminated. 

The harder and more zealously they strove, the worse 
they succeeded in any thing which deserved the name of 
dancing ; and the belief gained universal credence; that 

12 



138 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

tripping "the light fantastic toe" (unless brutally tramp- 
ling on their fellow-beings in their djung agonies, and 
awkwardly blundering over their maimed and putrifying- 
bodies might be called such) was " impossible." 

But the attention of all was now suddenly drawn to- 
wards a very extraordinary and uncouth apparition ; 
which, those declared, who were privileged to see it most 
clearly, was no less a personage than an ambassador from 
the divine Terpsichore herself. 

This apparition, as it flitted through the room, seemed 
to converse hurriedly and incoherently, with some dozen 
or so of the wretcheder sort, and then was gone. 

The purport of the " revelation," as near as it could 
be made out, from the awkward and enigmatical manner 
in which it was delivered, was, that Terpsichore had 
another and "infinitely superior" hall in reserve, in 
which for her "faithful" votaries to freely exercise their 
heels to " all eternity ;" and that she never intended that 
dancing should be performed in the " present hall," ex- 
cept of that simple kind which would serve to stimulate 
an unbounded desire for that diversion ; in fact, dancing 
-was all but prohibited ; it was restricted to accordancy 
with music so dolefully monotonous and slow as to have 
but two note?, and those both semibreves ; which music, 
those who undertook to interpret the mysterious ambas- 
sador's meaning, straightway proceeded to discourse, by 
means of the rudest and harshest toned instruments ima- 
ginable. 

Of course, the only motion which could match with 
this doleful music, consisted in slowly, and in the awk- 
wardest manner possible, bobbing up and down. 

The weaker party saw at a glance, that this kind of 
dancing, however dull and stupid, would, by avoiding 
collisions, be far better for them, than the liveliest, or ra- 
their deadliest dancing of which they had been able to 
lorm any conception; and when^the interpreters further 
announced that the dancers would " very shortly" be 
transferred from the present saloon to that infinitely su- 
erior one which Terpsichore had in reserve, they com- 



ILLUSLKATIYE. 



139 



menced, with great unanimity, to bob to the tincie of the 
doleful music. 

And now, dancing, such as it was, seemed in a fair 
way to go on without creating qidte as much harm as be- 
fore ; still, schism did gradually creep in ; in consequence 
of which, the interpreters of the enigmatical messenger, 
still further announced, that all who did not curtail their 
dancing in exact accordance with their doleful music, 
would be, in the splendid saloon to which all were short- 
ly to be transferred, trampled under foot by those wha 
did. 

Dreadful havoc now took place between those who 
refused to conform their dancing strictly to the doleful 
music, and those who attempted, in their own defence, 
and also for the good of the recusants themselves, to force 
them so to do. But the combined force of the adherents 
of dulness, added to the terror which their now pow- 
erful and influential leaders inspired, finally carried the 
day. 

However, the transfer to the splendid saloon did not 
take place as predicted, and ages seemed to roll by in a 
dullness as awiul as the former activity had been cruel. 
At length, a few of the musicians, (fbr they had by this 
time become a separate class, the condition of the higher 
interpreters being altogether above that of even the in- 
igmatical messenger) had discovered how to sound three, 
and some even three and a half notes, instead of the ori- 
ginal two. But this stage of '' progress" was so far from 
the actual " improvement" or " reform" which it was 
claimed to be, that it rendered the doleful music discord- 
ant, and thus destroyed the '' order^^ of the motion which 
had so long accompanied it. 

And now, slaughter still more dreadful than any 
which had formerly taken place, became a regular bu- 
siness. 

At length, matters were arranged on the ridiculous 
basis, that those who preferred the '' established dance'^ 
might continue its practice ; and all the dissenters might 
dance, with as much freedom as they could exercise^ 



140 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

without interfering with their neighbours. This agree- 
ment being with great accuracy written out and solemnly 
sworn to by both parties, the friends of " liberty" held 
great rejoicings over it, considering all difficulty, wrong 
and oppression, as at an end. 

But this absurd scheme, the instant it began to be 
put into practice, proved, of course, an entire delusion to 
both parties. For the two kinds of music did, in spite of 
all possible care, all but completely confuse the two kinds 
of dancing. However, the parties being now pretty 
equal, as to power, bore with the privations which they 
mutually inflicted, with most edifying charity and pati- 
ence in the main ; chewing and smoking tobacco, and 
swallowing intoxicating drinks, most lavishly, by way of 
killing ennui, and smothering chagrin. 

But from time to time, as ages rolled on, terrible out- 
breaks of violence did nevertheless occur ; only, however, 
to subside again pretty much to where things had been 
placed by the delusive compromise. 

At length, Terpsichore herself arrived. She stated 
that when her supposed messenger, whom she now declar- 
ed was herself, came, she was, like her subjects, in such 
a sleepy and confused condition, that she spoke of a 
transfer to another hall, indeed ; but she did not never- 
theless, mean one absolutely different; she did not know 
definitely what she did mean ; nor could her hearers 
have then understood the real purport of what she 
uttered, had it been ever so clearly expressed. 

She was now wide awake, and the most beautiful be- 
ing imaginable ; she brought with her the finest toned 
instruments, on which she played music of enchanting 
sweetnes, and proclaimed, that if her votaries would 
cease the heterogeneous clashing or " dancing" which they 
absurdly and so disastrously supposed to be "exercising 
their individual rights," she would soon teach them 
all how to dance to their heart's content, in the present 
hall. 

Eeduced to utter despair by chronic failure, the dan- 
cers, with but little opposition, acquiesced. Terpsichore 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 141 

then, after a short preliminary discipline, systematically 
arranged her votaries first into quadrilles, then waltzes, 
then polkas, &c., &c. ; and astonished all, by convertinor 
the very force which had thus far seemingly prevented 
dancing, and which the old fogies had always contended 
was as good as it could be without being absolutely 
changed, into the very means for its performance ; and 
ere my vision ended, every one in the hall was dancing 
to his or her entire satisfaction ; each, owing to the dy- 
namic order which the reign of science had introduced, 
enjoying all the (hitherto ^' impossible") freedom which 
they desired ; and finally desisting from dancing, only 
because they were so completely tired of it, that not a 
wish was entertained for resuming that amusement else- 
where. 



MISERY INCALCULABLY MOEE DIFFICULT 
AND EXPENSIVE THAN HAPPINESS. 

A VISION. 

In my second vision, it seemed as though I was among 
a people who, instead of studying how to make nature 
their friend and ally, were carrying on a war of subju- 
gation against her ; insanely imagining her to be " de- 
praved," and hostile to their highest interests. Confusion 
of course had a continuous holiday ; folly was rampant, 
and ignorance supreme. 

Although in this country, food ready cooked grew 
spontaneously and in great abundance, I observed that 
the people were ravenously hungry ; and that very many 
were actually dying of starvation, or languishing on beds 
of sickness in consequence thereof. 

I was not long, however, in discovering that the cause 
of all this was the prevalence of a notion that spoiling 
the appetite in every possible way, and denying the sto- 
mach the food it naturally craved, was the most sublime 



142 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

and meritorious of virtues, and the surest and most 
approved mark of " practical piety" — a sort of sub- 
jective commodity of no determinate value, yet held 
in the highest repute. 

The instant I prepared to appease my own appetite, 
I was most unceremoniously apprized that, contrary to 
all appearances, nothing was more difficult^ — that there 
was a " law" written out in due form in their frightfully 
ponderous statute book, prohibiting people from taking 
any food, except by sucking it through a very narrow 
tube. 

But I instantly perceived that the real basis of all 
this "piety," '^virtue," and ''law" was the fear that if 
people eat as much as- they pleased, they would conse- 
quently grow so large, that both clothing and even shel- 
ter, would be inadequate; these being produced only in 
such niggardly quantities as the all but wholly isolated ef- 
forts of individuals could furnish them ; the government 
devoting itself entirely to the business of being, by some 
means, and in some shape no matter how or what, at the 
head of affairs ; and never dreaming that it was its bus- 
iness to take measures for securing to the governed, abun- 
dance of clothing and shelter, and thus exemption from 
evil consequent on eating their fill ; too much present 
delight, it was generally feared, might divert man's affec- 
tions from the eternal revel in which he was instructed to 
expect to indulge after death ; besides, for government 
to interfere with individuals, except by way of taxing, 
humbugging and punishing them, would be to distrust 
the people's capability to take care of themselves, each 
on his or her ''own hook ;" and would be such a gross 
infringement on the people's individual rights, and such 
a death blow to "individual responsibility" or " virtue," 
that it was most strictly guarded against in their vaunt- 
ed Palladium of liberty — " The Constitution.'^'^ The pol- 
icy was, to compel every individual to clothe and house 
himself or herself and family, as he or she, with the 
least possible co-operation with others, best could ; and 
:of course to scrimp all in food, and thus curtail them in 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 143 

size, to that degree that they might, without public aid 
or private charity, and above all v^ithout reciprocal assis- 
tance, and consequent dan:iage to private " virtue," " mo- 
rality" and "independence," be as well housed and cloth- 
ed as they ought to expect to be in " the present evil 
world." 

In some of the Provinces or States, the government 
furnished tubes at a price fixed by statute ; in other parts 
of the country they were sold by a class privileged to 
demand the statute price for them ; and in a very few 
places any one might give them away, upon cer- 
tain conditions, provided that they were of the legal di- 
mensions. 

But this absurd law, instead of preventing natural 
eating, did but augment surreptitious gluttony to such a 
degree that what obtained the name of " the shameful 
disease" was, either virulently or in some of its chronic 
forms, almost universal. It became even transmissible 
by contact ; and there was scarcely a family, however 
punctilious, which was untainted. 

Also, food taken through "- the tube," as might ration- 
ally have been foreseen, irritated, stimulated, and unna- 
turally enlarged, instead of satisfying, the appetite. And 
as all eating sans tube, had, under severe penalties, to be 
done in secret, it was performed in such hot haste, in or- 
der to make the most of the opportunity, that many thus 
ravenously swallowed more food in a single day, than 
they would, if left to their own free choice, have eaten 
in a month; thus often making themselves so sick, how- 
ever, that they actually diminished instead of increasing 
in size ; w^hich was considered both a public gain — a 
"necessary evil" — and a just punishment of those imme- 
diately concerned. 

From the best information obtainable, it was a safe 
calculation that more than half the people dispensed with 
the use of the tube whenever they got a sly chance, des- 
pite the legal penalties, and notwithstanding the care 
with which they were educated to look on a violation of 
the tube law as the lowest diso^race. And it must be ob- 



144: THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

vious, that in order to prevent the unscrupulous, especi- 
ally when half starved, from breaking such a law, a con- 
stable would be needed for every citizen, a deputy sheriff 
for every constable, a high sheriff for every deputy, and 
so on. The " conscience" was the main dependance, af- 
ter all ; (although it became a standing proverb, that " an 
empty stomach had no conscience ;") and no pains were 
spared by those short-sighted enough to imagine it for 
their interest to perpetuate this unnatural, absurd and 
hypocritical state of things, to prepossess the " con- 
science" in " the law's" favor. 

But the horror with which the ignorant masses and 
weak minded people were taught to behold a breach of 
the tube law will best appear from the following extract 
from one of their favorite poets : 

*' The only way such guilt to cover, 
When on it glares the public eye, 
Is, for the beef and mutton lover, 
To slink into some hole and die." 

Although, as I have said, more than half the people 
were guilty of a breach of the tube law^, and all would 
be if they dared, still, whenever one chanced to be caught 
in the act, the reproaches heaped upon " one more un- 
fortunate" were unbounded, and always came thickest 
from those who sought thus to divert suspicion from their 
own guiltiness. Parents, though themselves half rotten 
with the shameful disease, abandoned their children, if 
the " misguided youths" became disgraced by, that is 
surprised at, " free eating ;" and public opinion justified 
even stabbing or shooting those who helped others to "il- 
licit'' food, if the affair leaked out. 

I saw an old and " highly respectable" man become 
incurably mad in consequence of his child having been 
caught eating an apple without having it half spoiled by 
the cooking necessarily preliminary to the nauseous pro- 
cess of sucking it through the lawful tube ; for so desti- 
tute of a sense of justice had the tube law rendered 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 145 

the subjects of it, that the disgrace of discovered illi- 
cit eating, tainted every member of the delinquents 
family. 

Yet, strange to say, of every novel or play written, 
a breach of the tube-law formed sometimes the tragic, 
but generally the comic part ; and as if to show to what 
a depth they could sink in inconsistency, hypocrisy and 
stupidity, the people, almost without exception, heartily 
relished a joke at the expense of the nevertheless cher- 
ished statute. 

The tube-law was as murderously cruel as it was ab- 
snrd and unnatural; for the obtaining of tubes depended, 
after all, greatly on tact, and even on chance ; conse- 
quently, many of the simple-minded, timorous, and " law- 
abiding," died of starvation. 

Tubes had also to be taken blindly, and retained ex- 
clusively for life, or whilst a vestige of them remained, 
however unfit they might be for use. Also, under cer- 
tain circumstances, which very often occurred, they 
might be forfeited ; when it became the duty of the for- 
lorn individuals from whom they were taken, to live as 
long as they could without eating, and then die like good 
citizens, trne to their "principles.'^ 

But need it be said that instead of so doing, most of 
these made it their chief business to seek out evasions of 
the tnbe-law, or to improve every chance of secretly 
transgressing it? A few however did not do so, and it 
was dreadful to behold these famishing wretches, these 
" martyrs to principle," in their agonies making the mo- 
tions of eating — chewing the wind — till some of them, 
frantic, bit, often unconsciously, at whatever vile and even 
poisonous substances bore any resemblance to food; 
and they ground their teeth together and wagged their 
haggard jaws till they lost the power to do so, became 
maniacs, and died raving mad. 

As a specimen of the senseless and absurd subtilties and 
impracticable, abstractions which this deluded people al- 
lowed themselves to be entangled in, and which they ac- 
cepted for " law :" — ^The highest court decided that no 



146 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

one could be convicted of a breach of the " tube-law" on 
the strength of proof that the accused had vomited up 
food in chunks twice or three times as large as could have 
been taken into the stomach in the lawful way ; nor was 
such proof allowed to be even offered in evidence. Nei- 
ther could people be prosecuted or held to answer for a 
breach of the tube law in consequence of being more 
hale, stout and cheerful than they could possibly have 
become through the use of the tube. Even to express 
suspicions of such, was, by that most opaque and sophis- 
tical of possible entanglements which passed for " com- 
mon law," decided to be libellous. 

As new tubes of course worked better than old, clog- 
ged up ones, there was a great temptation to destroy the 
latter ; to do so was therefore, by statute, made the high- 
est crime ; which, on conviction, was pu.dshed by death. 
Corrosives were at first resorted to with great impunity, 
by those desirous of getting rid of their old tubes, and 
who understood the knack of immediately getting new 
ones ; but chemical tests, after a while, put an end to the 
use of the coarsest of them. There remained one, how- 
ever, and the most eflScient of all, which, on account of its 
subtility, no chemical test could detect. Its use was 
mainly confined to the more refined and intelligent 
classes. 

My pity was very much excited by the case of a poor 
innocent looking young lady, who had not the tact requi- 
site for the procuration of a tube, and who was conse- 
quently in the last stages of starvation. Tet her own 
mother sternly refused her the use of food, declaring 
that she should go to her grave sooner than live disgraced 
by eating contrary to law ; yet this same mother had 
" used up" no less than three tubes, was " working her 
card" for a fourth, and was, besides, in that robust and 
sprightly condition which could be accounted for only on 
the hypothesis of sub rosa " free eating." 

A few were in favor of abolishing the tube. But these 
were opposed by those who led the multitude by the na- 
sal organ, who asked : " If people are so gluttenous with 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 147 

the tube, and grow so big that charity often has to clothe 
and house them, what would become of them without it V^ 
*' Doubtless," admitted the few, '' if tubes were suddenly 
abolished, people would, to make up for long deprivation, 
at first gormandise frightfully ; since, throughout nature, 
action must have its corresponding reaction ; but their 
unnatural or excessive appetites would gradually subside, 
after the withdrawal of the exciting cause ; and then few 
or none would eat more than was necessary and proper ; 
and, under a right condition of affairs, capable of being 
amply provided for." 

But the tube law had been in vogue from time imme- 
morial, and hence a sort of infernal charm seemed to 
sanctify it in the opinions of this besotted people. 

Could they " set at naught the wisdom of ages, and 
consider their progenitors, who had tubed it so respecta- 
ably through life as but a pack of fools?" 

The tube law, by continually mortifying the appetite, 
soured the temper, and vitiated the feelings every way ; 
and as parents transmit their bad qualities to their off- 
spring, (and in a constantly more and more aggravated 
form, until the original cause of the evil is removed) 
drunkards, fools, lunatics, murderers, and miscreants of 
every grade, were actually begotten such ; and the stick- 
lers for the infernal tube carried their presumption so 
far (or rather, insanity so s^enerally prevailed) that they 
accused " The Almighty" (an immensely magnified pho- 
tograph of themselves ; including, of course, all their 
depravities,) of thus " visiting the iniquities of the fath- 
ers upon the children." 

At length, sickness from starvation so crowded the 
public hospitals, dead bodies so blocked up the streets, the 
" shameful disease became so general, and detected in- 
fringements of the tube law, so taxed the public for pri- 
sons and their keepers, that the said law thus rendered 
itself impossible to be enforced, and became a dead let- 
ter, wholly disregarded, either from motives of shame or 
fear ; people grew up naked and homeless, from being 



148 THE RELIGION OF SOIENCE. 

too weak to furnish clothing and shelter for even their 
diminutive bodies. 

What was to be done ? Of course, but one resource 
remained : the facility for the production of clothing and 
shelter must be increased. The public, as a body, now 
took this view of the case, and, in good earnest, set about 
testing its correctness, in spite of the warnings of sage 
old fogies who declared that nothing could be done except 
what already had been done, unless some way could be 
devised by which nature could be " ctbsolutely changedP 
The half naked, houseless wretches who mainly compos- 
ed the community, and the capitalists and the skillful 
who, to some extent, in spite of all obstacles, still existed, 
now organized their combined force ; an equitable ar- 
rangement for mutually co-operative wJiolesale produc- 
tive purposes was made, and the best clothing, and the 
most magnificent shelter immediately became abundant, 
through mere necessary exercise on the part of opera- 
tives, a little attention, by way of amusement, on the 
part of the skillful, and no vexation or care on the part 
of capitalists ; and eating, to the full extent which nature 
required, and of course, in utter disregard of the restric- 
tive tube, became an honour instead of a disgrace ; large 
people were emulated, and soon superseded altogether 
the half dead wretches who, equally foolish, egotistic, and 
contemptible, had set themselves up for facsimiles of 
^' The Almighty." Sickness, including even " the shame- 
ful disease," it is hardly necessary to add, soon became 
whoUv unknown. 



UTOPIA EEALIZED. 

A VISION. 

In my third vision, it seemed as though I was in the 
interior of an immenie edifice : so vast, indeed, that 
though the single room into which I first entered was 
about two thousand five hundred miles square, there were 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 149 

several others larger, and numerous smaller, yet quite 
extensive ones. 

In this immense room, which I instantly perceived to 
be one of the wards of a hospital of no less dimensions 
than the whole edifice, lay, apparently in the last sta- 
ges of exhaustion, a single patient; no less a personage, 
however, than the soi disant " smartest" member of the 
family of The Great Being who continually lives, and in- 
cessantly, however slowly, learns. 

This afflicted creature — this groaning mass of self- 
conceit, notwithstanding the long course of schooling 
which he, in common with some of his brothers, had 
gone through with, had some how or other failed to ac- 
quire sufficient practical wisdom to find out how to ex- 
tricate himself from the miserable dilemma of being, 
like all the rest of the family who had grown into notice, 
alternately victimized, and thus kept a perpetual invalid, 
by the charlatarny, and blind and reckless experiment- 
ing of two arrant quacks ; the practice of the first of 
whom was to stealthily poison and stupify his patient till 
he became manageable, and then pick his pockets, by way 
of securing his ^' lawful" fee for forcing the nastiest and 
most abominable" stringenf'^ doses down his throat; and 
this system of practice was kept up, till the gripes brought 
the sufferer to his pluck, and made him kick, scratch, and 
bite most valiantly ; which uncommon exercise, stirring 
up the bile throughout his whole system, he vomited the 
long pent up foulness of his stomach full into the doc- 
tor's face ; and sneezed so violently, purged so furiously, 
and let drive such putrid blasts from his nether entrails, 
as to frighten and stink his tormentor into some obscure 
corner of the Great Edifice ; when the other impostor 
who, Ghoul-and-Yulture-like, loved nothing so much as 
the sight, smell, and taste of all this, and who c<' nsidered 
it so '^ glorious," even, that he wrote voluminous histories 
of all the disgusting details, entered, and took his turn at 
the Great Patient. 

His bouts however, were always comparatively short ; 
for he urged on, by every possible means, the puking, 

13 



150 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

purging, and other discharges which his predecessor had 
unintentionally, and so unfortunately for himself, as well 
as for his patient, caused to be begun ; did not spare the 
lancet, even, and was so insatiably greedy, so abominably 
nasty, and so wasteful withal, that it did not take him 
long to devour the whole contents of his subject's stom- 
ach and bowels ; and to suck and waste his blood, till it 
became so scarce and thin that on it, he grew too weak 
to be able to sustain himself; when the banished impos- 
tor, his predecessor, who had all along been watching 
his opportunity, re-entered, kicked him in turn into ob- 
scurity, and re-commenced his own before-mentioned sys- 
tem of operations. 

In the most comfortable, or rather least uncomfortable 
place in the whole ward, a decripid, wrinkled, idiotic 
old hag sat in a crib of gold, diamonds, and precious 
stones. Evidently from choice, she w^as wallowing in 
all the nastiness which her foul carcass had ever ex- 
creted. 

Whilst I was seriously apprehending that the result- 
ing stink must prove fatal to me, I was somewhat as- 
sured by observing that the Great Patient snuffed 
it up with eagerness ; and seemed actually comforted 
thereby. 

The old woman, I found, was the mother of the two 
quacks just mentioned, (the first of whom was a legitimate, 
and the second a bastard son) and*was queen of the whole 
edifice ; in every room of which she was, in virtue of her 
magical power, simultaneously present, and as magnific- 
ently provided for as in this. 

On the bare fioor reclined, naked and uncared for, a 
female just entering her teens, of such enchanting beauty 
as to leave no doubt that when she arrived at maturity, 
she would be the incarnation of perfection itself. That 
dhe possessed a charmed life, was evident from the fact 
that she survived, unblemished, her most abominable 
surroundings. 

The Great Patient, notwithstanding his manifold af- 
flictions, was by no means dead to that most delightful of 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 151 

sentiments, — adoration ; as was evident from the devout 
obeisances which he ever and anon made to the old wo- 
man ; yet so depraved had that sentiment become, that 
whenever his eyes wandered in the direction of the very 
embodiment of loveliness, he seemed to be even uncon- 
scious of her presence ; and whenever the old woman 
looked that way, she scowled so as to appear more ugly, 
if possible, than ordinarily. In fact, the detestable old 
wretch had, from her habit of tossing her head aside, ma- 
liciously, from whatever was beautiful, at length fix'd it 
hind side before; so that she could look only back- 
wards. 

Under the immediate surveillance of the old woman, 
and contiguous to the Great Patient, was a huge some- 
thing, the use of which, I did not even attempt to guess, 
through a window of which I beheld on a table curious- 
ly and artistically composed of silver dollars and gold 
eagles, a most ponderous tome ; as if to preserve which, 
by all earthly means, its cover was of massive gold, and 
its edges were not only as thickly as possible gilded, but 
deeply embedded in gold dust. Insbort,all that gold 
and silver could do for the preservation and honour of 
this great book was done. 

This precious volume was, according to the lettering 
on its cover, (the only portion about which ordinary ob- 
servers knew any thing) '' The Book of Practice ;" to cure 
disease in accordance \<^th which, this great hospital, its 
Great Patient informed me, had been founded. On opening 
The Book^ however, surprise and astonishment absolute- 
ly, for the moment, bewildered me; for its interior, des- 
pite the power of even gold, was too rotten to bear to be 
touched ; in fact, it was so badly rent, that not a whole 
sentence remained intact ; and from time immemoria5, 
no two examiners of its contents had been able to come 
to the same conclusion ; nay, so diametrically opposite 
were those conclusions capable of being, that the two 
quacks both equally claimed to draw their doctrine from 
The Book ; and so precious was the method of The Book 
in itself considered, that any amount of sickness was 



152 THE KELIGICN OF SCIENCE. 

thought amply compensated for, in being treated in ac- 
cordance with it ; and to such an extent was this mania 
carried, that a famous assistant, and most eflBcient cats- 
paw of the nasty bastard declared that, with respect to a 
speciality which he, quoting the language of a preceding 
brother chip, designated as " the sum of all villanies," 
he had rather it would go on fifty years longer than have 
it removed except in accordance with the rules prescrib- 
ed in The Book '^ the meaning of all this, however, was, 
that the said assistant was receiving, for tickling the pre- 
judices of his hearers with his half-serious, half comic 
expositions of those precious rules, the snug sum of five 
thousand dollars per annum, perquisites to double that 
amount, and any quantity of fulsome admiration from 
the members of his clique. 

The contents of '' The Book," despite the efforts of 
the most learned scholars to fit them to a meaning, pre- 
sented a mass of jargon, balderdash, self-contradiction 
and absurdity so utterly unintelligible, and so baudy 
withal, that with the exception of some common place, 
evidently extraneous matter which had, as if surreptiti- 
ously or by accident crept therein, the whole might have 
been the work of the nasty old creature who occupied 
the gold and diamond crib. How could so much science, 
art, labour and expense have been perverted to the ho- 
nour and perpetuation of such worthlessness ? The con- 
trast between the cost of the means and the value of the 
end was so utterly monstrous, that for an instant I fairly 
doubted the testimony of my very eyes. 

" Why, in the name of all that is neither stark star- 
ing madness nor slavering idiotcy," asked I of the Great 
Patient, whisperingly, for fear of arousing the ire of the 
old woman, but more from dread of the damage to my 
olfactory nerves, which stirring up that mass of putridity 
would most assuredly produce," is not the incarnation of 
oveliness, whom I see so neglected, queen here, instead 
of — 

"Ah," he interrupted, "I, too, have sometimes 
dreamed after that fashion ; but awoke, alas, to find that 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 153 

I has been deluded into the wild regions of mere theory 
and imagination, by that tantalizing phantom, — the 
Queen of Utopia; who sometimes is fancied to linger 
hereabout. She, — ^the beau ideal of perfection, queen 
hereli Impossible, Our dreams of perfect bliss are re- 
alizable only after death. Stranger, look about you ; 
take 2i practical view of things as they naturally exist, 
and judge for j^ourself." 

"Perfect bliss impossible during life, yet r^aZ^^aJZ^ 
after deathT^ "Evidently," thought I, " the connection 
between the speaking and thinking faculties of this mass 
of misery is clean severed. For where, except beyond 
anywhere, — outside ot duration and space even, could 
such driveling balderdash have any significancy ?" 

Just now the reigning impostor entered. 

"Tour most Humble Servant, my Honored Master," 
eaid he, bowing to the floor before the Great Patient, 
rolling up his eyes devoutly towards the old woman, 
scornfully sneering at the young beauty, and taking care 
to exhibit, as glaringly as possible, his vaunted medicine 
box 

After licking up, with evident relish, (so utterly de- 
praved had his vocation rendered his appetite) a large 
pool of saliva, the consequence of a stupifying weed 
which the patient, to assuage his anguish, was in the 
constant practice of chewing, and after filling a bottle 
which held as much as he could carry ofi* with blood, 
which was pouring from lancet wounds which he had, 
from time to time, made in all the patient's accessible 
veins, without knowing or trying to find out how to close 
them up, (that being the last thing which he wanted to 
do) he resumed : 

"How did the last application of the great remedy 
effect you, my Sovereign Master? But why do I ask? 
As it was exactly what your supreme wisdom wished for, 
of course it must have been " all right ;'' just " the thing ;" 
*' bunkum ;" eh ?" 

" Ah, Doctor," groaned the miserable patient, " If 
the application of your ointment to the ulcer in one of my 



154 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

vital members so gangren'd it — so widely spread the cor- 
ruption that I thought it must be all over with me, my 
torture has been so much more excrutiating since you 
made your ointment so strong, that in penetrating, it 
cuts my every fibre, and attempted to lay it on thick 
enough to smother — 

'' I tell you," impatiently interrupted the quack, " that 
my great remedy — pardon me, your great remedy, which 
I, the humble instrument of your sovereign will, do but 
apply — is infallible ; and what is more, there is no other ; 
the only difiiculty is, that it has never been fully 
used." 

" Fully used ?" retorted the patient, " Pray, to what 
part of my poor body has not been applied the remedy 
of which your all promising medicine-box is the reser- 
voir? I am so completely enveloped in, and so thoroughly 
permented by it, that I feel as though I was in the very 
throes of dissolution. I scarcely know my head from m;^ 
heels ; and what I take for my heels to day, marvelously 
resembles my head to morrow, and vice versa ; and I 
am so crazed, that when I start to go one way, I find 
myself, before I am aware of it, going in exactly the con- 
trary direction." 

'' My Dear — My Honoured Sir," coaxingly, and with 
lamb-like mildness, replied the Doctor, completely non- 
plussed. " Pray don't further endanger your precious 
health, by falling into a passion with your very humble 
servant, who, you must assuredly know, can do nothing 
which you do not command, and who most respectfully 
and deferentially recommends you to do only whatever 
your sovereign self thoroughly, and beyond all question 
most wisely, approves. My Supreme Master, under our 
common Providence, [bowmg very low both to the Great 
Patient and the old woman] deign to permit the unworthy 
instrument of j^our Supreme Wisdom's Will, in all rever- 
ence to ask, for his guidance and " instruction," a calm 
and detailed account of the symptoms of your case — a 
somewhat minute description of your feelings. Surely 
there can be no evil for which your transcendant wisdom 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 155 

cannot suggest a cure ; and I but submissively wait, 
and most assiduously study to find out and obey your 
wishes." 

"Symptoms, feelings, descriptions," roared the agon- 
izing sufferer, in tones which made the great chief of 
empirics stagger, aghast, and hug, convulsive!}^, the dar- 
ling box, from which he still desperately hoped to con- 
jure a quackery deceptive enough to hide, and broad 
enough to cover, all former ones, ^'^ a thousandth part of 
them would exhaust your patience to hear, and my pow- 
er to reUite. Read the Daily Bulletins of the rapidly 
accumulating infernalities by which I am constantly more 
and more tormented. Starvation — pauperism — bank- 
ruptcy — repudiation — defalcation — murder — rape— pros- 
titution — robbery — forgery — swindling, and imprison- 
ment of the swindled instead of the swindler. Bribery 
and extortion throughout. Corruption at my very heart, 
Oh-0-0-0 O O O." 

And the groan was so horrible, that I at first thought 
it must surely be a dying one ; but instead of growing 
fainter and fainter, it waxed louder and louder, till it 
seemed to be echoed from every part of the vast hospi- 
tal. Instantly, the scene of my vision changed, and I 
beheld, through the length and breadth of "The Model 
Republic" every demagogue of note, including the Pres- 
ident himself, with their necks in halters, the other ends 
of which, were fastened to limbs of trees, at the height 
of about twent}'^ feet from the ground. The pale and 
trembling wretches stood on little platforms about five 
feet high ; each platform being so constructed, that a sin- 
gle blow of a mallet would demolish it, and leave its in- 
cumbant pendulous. 

" All ready ?" sternly demanded the head vigilants. 
"All ready," still more sternly responded the executioners 
pro tem^ firmly grasping their mallets. " All ready," 
seemed to echo from thousands of miles of gleaming 
bayonets which guarded this wholesale treason, which 
was now instantly untreasoned,by being fully sanctioned 
by the vast multitude of spectators, and in tones which 



156 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

seemed, like thunder peals, to reverberate from the very 
heavens. 

The tumult, however, was quickly succeeded by that 
breathless stihiess to which the most turbulent resign 
themselves whilst in momentary expectation of witnessing 
the violent death struggles of their fellow beings. 

Tlie head demagogue now respectfully requested to 
be heard in his own defence, and promised to set up no 
justification based on what had hitherto passed for law, 
but to confine his pleading strictly within the bounds of 
that justice, reason, and equity, by which his triumphant 
judges themselves, professed to be guided. 

This caused some slight signs of impatience on the 
part of the multitude, and the bayonet and mallet men ; 
but after a short and hurried consultation among the 
chief vigilants, the request of the demagogue in chief was 
granted, accompanied b}^ the caution, that any departure 
from its terms would be the signal for the execution both 
of himself and his confederates. 

Had the Ex-President been the meanest of cowards, 
it was now perfectly evident that that dare-devil auda- 
city which always passes for courage with the multitude, 
could alone save him. 

" Is there a man in aU this vast assemblage, who, 
twenty-four hours since, would have refused the situation 
of President of this great nation ?" asked the ex-chief 
humbug, in a tone of '' neck or nothing" boldness. He 
paused a moment to see the effect of this on those whom 
he had often before edified from a platfonti or a stump; 
and perceiving that he had made '^a lucky hii," he pro- 
ceeded : — " Had the spirit of the immortal Washington 
himself, inhabited the body of him who. for the last three 
years, has had the misfortune to be President of this 
great Republic, were these the last words I shall ever 
utter, I swear, that results could not have been better for 
the nation, than they have been." 

''Admitting that I might have tried to stem the tide 
of corruption which has overturned the proudest Democ- 
racy the world has ever seen, and brought its magistracy 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 



15T 



to rain ; honesty, good intention, and virtue, had all the 
world has ever possessed of these been concentrated in 
me, would have been as useless, as pity would be to the 
head devil in the infernal regions." 

" Myself, and those your suffrages have made not only 
what we were^ but what we now are^ are accused of im- 
poverishing the nation by our prodigality, and of tramp- 
ling law and justice underfoot. Gentlemen, what kind 
of law, and what sort of justice have we been disregard- 
ing? Is it not that kind of law and justice in accord- 
ance with which you are the mutual impoverishers and 
despoilers of each other, and in accordance with which, 
the strongest are the crushers into the very dust, of the 
weakest ? If I have rewarded my partizans with unne- 
cessary ofiBces, at the nation's expense, are not nine- 
tenths of your "merchant princes" equally unnecessary? 
Will you reply, that had any of you refrained from bur- 
dening society with one more merchant, stock-jobber, 
broker, quack doctor, sham lawyer, or creed monger, 
you would thereby but have relinquished the situation to 
some one else ? Well, supposing I had declined the si- 
tuation of President? Would not your suffrages have 
given the place to another ? Or had I refused to ac- 
cept the nomination, except on a more honest platform 
than I did ? Would not some one, with his scheme for 
enlarging the area of freedom," or some such clap-trap, 
have been sure to have defeated me?" 

" If I am so detestable as to deserve death by the 
halter, I will die, hurling this in your teeth : — ^That I am 
but the head of a constituency, nine-tenths of whom 
are, as near as they can le^ what I was two hours 



since." 



" Again : — Having accepted the position which your 
free suffrages bestowed on me, had I refused to reward, 
as I have done, those most actively engaged in helping 
me thereto, poison, — the dagger, — impeachment, — or at 
least your own contempt, scorn, and condemnation, would 
have been my reward. I should have been stigmatized 



158 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



as a traitor to the party (of course composed of the ma- 
jority) to whom I owed my position." 

"Daring many preceding Presidential terms, has not 
every public officer of note, who has attempted " retrench- 
ment and reform" been sneered at as mean, or falsely 
accused, by his jealous and less consciencious compeers, 
of the most atrociously interested motives ? And have 
not such accusations been very generally credited by the 
people, the very improbability of their being true, seem- 
ing to confirm their truth, in the opinion of those too 
simple minded to suppose it possible that the majority of 
honourable members of the government could tell such 
abominable lies about one of their own number? no 
amount of counter testimony being sufficient to remove 
all suspicion but that where there had been such a 
tremendous smoke, there must have been some fire." 

" Gentlemen, from highest to lowest; that is, from 
richest to poorest, among you, reckless prodigality has 
long since been christened generosity, and the reverse 
has been sneered at as meanness ; and I have but been 
perpetrating, on the largest scale, what every one of you 
have been perpetrating on a scale as large as you could. 
The only exceptions to this have been, a set of merely 
denunciatory cynics, whose principles are too self-nulli- 
fying and therefore absurd, to deserve to be even laughed 
at, and a few constructive sociologians, to whose " theo- 
ries" you have never even deigned to listen." 

Finally, gentlemen, the justice and equity which you 
have steadily contributed to produce, may be summed 
up in the reduction of the masses to either chattel or w^a- 
ges-slavery ; to the necessity ot laboring for the mainte- 
nance of those who do not do so productively from fear 
of the lash, or from the dread of starvation ; without al- 
ways being able to avoid the first penalty, and without 
ever being able to more than approximate towards an 
avoidance of the second one. Such, gentlemen, is your 
justice, and your equity. Now, consummate them on 
your principal agent. I am ready." 

The unanimity, both of the vigilants and their sup- 



ILLUSTRATIVB. 159 

porters, was now very sensibly shaken, and demagogoc- 
racy seemed on the point of triumphing once more, when 
the counter revolution was checked by the appearance, 
on the scene of action, of that immense army of men 
and women who had hitherto constituted the prison po- 
pulation of ''the laud of liberty;" and who, in the gen- 
eral uproar, had risen on their keepers, and freed them- 
selves. These, instantly catching from those who had 
heard it, the purport of what had just been delivered, 
claimed, that its logic was as applicable to them, as to 
any of the new fashioned criminals. 

A vast multitude of " prostitutes" further claimed, 
that the amnesty should be made general, by includ- 
ing " vice" as well as " crime." This brought matters to 
a crisis. 

" Sooner than abolish the distinction between virtue 
and vice, innocence and crime," exclaimed all the moral 
and virtuous in concert, "perish the whole human 
race."* 

Instantly, this horrible alternative seemed on the 
point of being consummated. But ere the virtuous and 
vicious, phrensied with fury, could fasten a death grap- 
ple on each other's throats, the most intelligent and noble 
mea and women rushed forward, took the despised af- 
fectionately by the hand, and " brother" — " sister" — 
tenderly pronounced, not only quenched the thirst for 
vengeance where " vice" and " crime" held their lowest 
seat, but, as if by magic, the mallets dropped from the 
hands of the executioners, the ropes vanished from the 
necks of the demagogues, and the bayonets were thrust 
deep into the earth, as if the very steel which composed 
them was ashamed of its murderous form, and impatient 
to be converted to implements of husbandry. 



* " Let the colonies perish, rather than a principle." " The only basis of 
civilized society is morality." " The idea of The Supreme Being and of the 
immortality of the soul is a continual appeal to justice" Robbspierr. 

Can anything be plainer than that however lovely "moral principles" 
may appear in the abstract, revenge, malice, cruelty, and cold-blooded mur- 
der are the legitimate fruits of practical virtue and morality ? 



160 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

All now, including finally even the " moral" and " vir- 
tuous," indulged in one long, mutual embrace ; during 
which, each seemed to personify, to each, the wl3ole hu- 
man race. Universal love, hitherto fragmentarily isola- 
lated and pent up, now gushed communicatively from all 
hearts, and streamed spontaneously and in concert from 
all eyes. It seemed as though man had, after agonizing- 
ly searching for ages, at length found his beloved fellow 
man, with whom he had never before been permitted to 
be acquainted. 

Oh, there was religious science ; there was knowledge; 
there Yf2i% practical wisdom and understanding; but not 
a particle of ^'virtue," "morality," "principle," or "dis- 
interestedness ;" the entire motive power in the case was 
pure, true, enlightened, far-seeing selfishness. 

There was, at length, the first ripening fruits of deve- 
lopment — refinement — art ; there was a foretaste of the 
true " state of nature," which, could Eousseau have look- 
ed forward to, instead of looking hacTcwards after^ he 
would never have been the apostle of mediocrity ; or 
the advocate of that "disinterested,'' "self-sacrificing" 
"virtue," — that vindictive moralism, which furnished 
the text for The Reign of Terror, and which has always 
been the cruelest scourge which the hand of ignorance, 
even, has ever wielded. 

Long before the rebellion against demagogocracy 
broke out, supernaturalism had become the derision, not 
only of those with any just pretensions to science, but to 
all the clergy who were not too low and ignorant to be 
tolerated in the society of such ; and the only adherents 
to the ridiculous and nonsensical opinions which had their 
rise in primitive and savage times, were the "poor in 
spirit" among the masses. A few of the most enlight- 
ened among the clergy and men of science had also be- 
come indoctrinated in the knowledge that all mankind 
and all nature in the connectioil constituted one organ- 
ism, no part of which could be indiflferent to all the other 
parts ; and that every part of this immense organism, 
was capable, as it, in turn, arrived at the stage ot human^ 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 161 

development, of being enabled, through science, in con- 
cert with every other protempore human part or individ- 
ual, to perfectly fulfill all its functions; the sum of all of 
which functions being, the enjoyment, on Earth, of per- 
fect and satisfactorily-lasting happiness. 

This enlightened few now came forward, and offered 
their services to the human race, on the following condi- 
tions : — 

Article I. Mankind shall repose, in the professors of 
The Science of Sciences and Art of Arts of adjusting, 
harmonizing, and regulating the U iversal Organism, 
comprising Man and all Nature in the connection, (or all 
which can, ever so slightly, be the objective organ of 
thought) not the blind faith required by the teachers of 
Supernaturalism, nor the halfway confidence reposed in 
the apostles of the subjective, vague, speculative, opin- 
ionistic, vain and delusive sociology based thereon; but 
the enlightened, wide awake faith now reposed in the pro- 
fessors of even fractional science and art. Man shall 
judge his sociological and universological professors, as 
he judges ordinary professors — by results. 

Article II. It is provisionally agreed, whilst the 
Religion of Science, and law and government in accord- 
ance therewith are being fully elaborated, and whilst an 
equitable arrangement (or union) between capital, labor, 
and skill, (the true Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) is being 
made, that the immediate wants of the needy shall be 
amply supplied ; and that those whom former abuses 
have rendered so insane that no amount of good treat- 
ment can make it safe to leave them at large, shall be de- 
tained in asylums, and taken care of in the tenderest 
manner that their cases will admit of. 

Article III. Yirtue and V'ice, except as provi- 
ded in Article IV., are henceforth banished from the 
Earth. 

14 



162 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



Article lY. Each individual as one party, and all 
Mankind as the other, shall be held mutually responsible 
for their acts, either of omission or commission, in the 
ratio of their power. 

The Provisional Scientific Dictatorship required that 
Ihe body politic (for whom they laboured, and for whom 
they engaged to perform positively useful service, instead 
of being that which had hitherto degraded man below 
vegetables — " a necessary evil") should, whilst The Uni- 
versal Organism was being put into harmoniously work- 
ing order, provide for, and sustain them, similarly as the 
individual human body provides for and sustains the 
brain, nerves, spine, and other organs, without which, it 
would be a mass of as dead equality^ as would be the so- 
cial or even The Universal Organism under praGtiGol 
democracy. 

The Provisional Scientific Dictatorship also issued the 
following Circular, to be read in all the churches and 
public places: — 

People : — The ballot-box, that opposite abomination to 
absolutism's scepter, is no more ; that last relic of the 
error which encrusted supernaturalism — demagogism — 
is eliminated. 

The Universal Organism at length preliminarily exists. 
All things are on the verge of full creation. Law will 
henceforth, really, because spontaneously, emanate from 
the governed. It will be discovered and modified, in- 
stead of '^ enacted," and by those with all science or 
knowledge, as fast as it can be evolved, for their guide, 
instead of either absolutistic or popular prejudice. 

The guaranty for the fidelity of those who will hence- 
forth discover and declare law will be the certain know- 
ledge, that on your full liberty, and perfect and satisfac- 
factorily-lasting happiness, their own inevitably de- 
pends. 

Education will, with all possible despatch, be placed 
on such a footing, that both those whose tastes and capa- 
bilities are general, and those whose tastes and capabili- 
ties are special, will elect themselves to, or spontaneously 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 163 

find, their true positions;"^ and as, henceforth, honour is 
banished, and well-being will depend, not on positions, 
but on the capability with which they are filled, fear not 
that we shall be inclined to hold over, after it is demon- 
strated that others can fill the places which we occupy, 
with more benefit to you, and, of course, to us, than we 
can. We will not wreck the ship whch we sail in pur- 
posely, and we have now the requisites for preventing us 
from doing so accidentally. 

People, the area of actual freedom can have no earthly 
boundary. A faith self-evidently true, a system of law 
necessarily just, and a government practically free, re- 
quire the compass of the whole world : within nothing 
short of which immense space, as liberty cannot be re- 
alized, it has never, hitherto, existed, except speculative- 
ly, or as a vain illusion. 

The following " Confession of Living Faith" was, by 
the cier gjy proposed in all the churches, instead of the 
dead old creeds : — 

I believe, so firmly that I will, with all my might, act 
in accordance with that belief, — 

I. That nature, or all which can, ever so slightly, 
be the objective organ of thought, is all sufficient. 

II. That development will prove adequate to all 
for which miracle can be understandingly invoked. 

III. That Man, NatureV highest consciousness, can, 
through universal organization, become, oljecPively^ the 
God which he instinctively created himself, subject- 
ively ; that is, as almighty as he can coherently desire 
to be. 



♦Brute force is alone " practical" 
cunning is the ''practical" resource in the government of the '-civilized.'* 
It is as natural for the " civilized" generally, not to believe in llie practi- 
cability of a scientific governmental or social basis, as it is for savages not 
to comprehend, till experience teaches them, how trickery and cunning 
can successfully cope with brute force. 



164 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

This faith, the people unanimously accepted, as soon 
as they saw that the clergy and higher classes subscribed 
to it. This, momentarily astonished me. But as soon as 
I recollected how the masses have always rushed into re- 
volution, no matter of what kind, after it was organized, 
(witness the French Revolution) and what a powerful im- 
pulse the esprit du corps is. even when the task it impos- 
es is moit onerous, (witness the fire engine companies) I 
was astonished only at my own astonishment; and the 
only wonder in the case seemed to be my own momentary 
dullness. Man's narrow, suicidal selfishness, is engendered 
by his present false position ; and when the present pos- 
ition of things is reversed, the only danger will be, that 
the reaction will be too powerful ; and that man, in the 
exuberance of his openheartedness, will rush into com- 
munism. 

The downfall of demagogocracy had always before 
resulted in a military dictatorship. Kow, however, Man 
had spontaneously placed himself under a Scientific Dic- 
tatorship, and nature, or all the humanly conceivable, had 
entered on a new phase of creation ; and all this, without 
a single voice being raised against it ; without one ''hur- 
raw" for that leveling equality, and isolated or individu- 
alized liberty, which all seemed to have a more or less 
vivid impression, had hitherto but deluded and enslaved 
the world ; had kept man in that vicious circle of misery, 
vexation and humbug, whose aphelion was absolutism, 
and whose perihelion was demagogocracy. The impres- 
sion seemed to be general, that liberty could be nothing 
short of the Science of Sciences and Art of Arts ; ana 
that well-doing required the whole force of nature most 
advantageously organized. Certain of the sect of eternal 
indecisicnists, however, were noticed to shake their heads 
somewhat dubiously, evidently not liking the idea that 
the professors of sociology should make a living thereby, 
and itching to exhibit their adroitness at intellectual pu- 
gilism, in a promiscuous "free discussion" of the whole 
vast subject now newly before the world. But that waa 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 165 

skepticism's last flicker, and consequent more on the force 
of habit than on reflection. 

That wildest of Utopias, the helter skelter popular 
government experiment, had previously failed, both in 
Greece, Rome, England, France, and everywhere else 
where it had been tried ; and virtue and morality, under 
the auspices, it must be confessed, of reason, had rivalled 
even superstition in persecution and cruelty ; nay, super- 
stition itself, being opinionism instead of positivism, ne- 
ver prosecuted unaided by reason. But it was reserved 
for America to pile up the oppression of demagogism so 
high, that its fall crushed all recuperation out of it; and 
thus to put an end to a human scourcre which had be- 
come such an intolerable infliction, that it was difficult 
to determine whether ^'free labourers" or "slaves" had 
the most unccmfortable time of it, or whether the 
wealth-vex'd or the poverty-stricken were most to be 
pitied. 

Whilst the empire of mystery and its resulting opin- 
ionism and humbug, was being overthrown in America, 
a corresponding movement was, as though sjMupatheti- 
cally, going on in Europe. The Pope, sustained by the 
Cardinals, the Bishops and the Catholic sovereigns, at 
length demonstrated that the power of any thing, or 
system, to produce evxl, when abused, is always in the 
ratio of it'* power to produce good, when used ; that the 
Church was, at hottom^ founded on the rock — organiza- 
tion — against which the hell of disorganization had never 
quite prevailed, and against which it might now ^vell 
despair of prevailing. Even England was now anxious 
to become Catholic ; and, after a '' nine day's wonder," 
the people, everywhere, joyfully received the very nut 
of science, from those who had hitherto fed them, like 
swine, only with its husks ; and drank the cream of 
^'the sincere milk of the word" of living truth, much 
more naturally than they had hitherto gulped down the 
vile slops which had been given to them tor such. 

I here give a sketch of a dialogue which I overheard, 
about a week after the events just related, in order to 



166 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE, 

show with what ease and rapidity " old things passed 
away," after the matter was earnestly and practically ; 
that is scientifically, and artistically taken in hand. 

One of the Masses, — [addressing his com]ieers.] The 
New Heaven and The New Earth to be created out of 
old Terra Firma ! The process fairly under way, and 
Man finishing it ! 

I giie-s, neighbours, that there was'nt much napping- 
in church last Sunday, for the telegraphs inform us, that 
substantially the same gospel was preached every- 
where. 

Another. — Well, no doubt it is all right ; at all events^ 
we are safe in believing it, as the Scriptures, should they 
after all, prove to be true, declare nothing more plainly 
and emphatically, than that we, laymen, must hear and 
heed whatever the Church teaches. Besides, I must 
confess to a glimmering conception as to the how of the 
new faith ; which is more I am sure, than any of u& 
can say with respect to the old one, over the expo 
fiitions of which, we therefore, you know, always fell 
asleep. 

An Ex'Old Fogy, — At last ! Heaven to be on Earth t 
1< ay, already begun! And Hell nowhere! An«i sin^ 
simply a disease more than half cured ! And virtue and 
vice botli dead and buried in the same grave! Well, I'm 
done now. 

A Promiscuous Discussio7iist, — I have hitherto sup- 
posed that man was a leasoning being, who was to be 
convinced, each singly and for himself, by a long course 
of argument, ere he changed his course voluntarily. 
But i find that he follows his leaders as naturally a& 
mere inanimate matter falls into the train of larger 
masses ; as thoughtlessly as sheep follow the belh>\ eather 
of the flock. 

The First Speaker, — [to the Discussionist] My friend, 
pardon me f»r suggesting, that if you had not been stone 
blind, you would have known all this long ago. 13ut 
who do you call reasoning beings, if we are not such? 
The only difi\3rence, in respect of reason, between yoa 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 167 

and U8, evidently is, that we can reason more and better 
in a minute, than you, professed reasoners, can in a life- 
time. Our reason, (unless you allow that we have a men- 
tal faculty more than you have) always told us, instanteVy 
that the power which created us was almighty and suffir- 
dent ; and that that power stood pledged for Heaven at 
last, if mail performed his part 

Children in Chorus, — Oh, Mama! Oh, Papa! what 
a Sundy School we had. Such gymnastics — such music 
— such dancing — such delightful lessons, all about how 
to be happy. And such a love of a Catecliism, in place 
of the old one about the Devil, and Hell fire, and an an- 
gry God. Such a fine time altogether. May'nt we always 
go to Sunday School ? 

Parents in Chorus. — Let us burn up the birch rods 
at once. 

A Wag, — Ay, annihilate them, by all means. The 
Museum of human folly will be sufficiently full, without 
the addition of a huge bundle of switches, labeled 
*' the youth's instructor under supernaturalistic civili- 
zation." 

I saw a few of the most stupid and ill-educated among- 
the preachers, persist in braying and drawling about an 
immaterial Heaven of inconceivable bliss, and a Hell 
of equall}^ inconceivable misery, and in passing the hat 
round for the pennies of those demented enough to 
part with them for such an equivalent. But these 
preachers were, with all possible dispatch, put under 
medical treatment, and it was perfectly astonisbino- to 
behold with what rapidity nine-tenths of them became 
rational. 

The scene of my vij^ion now rapidly shifted from 
stage to stage of development and progress, till it reach- 
ed the thirtieth century ; the substantial gl'>ry and mag- 
nificence of each succeeding stage, increasing in the ra- 
tio (in which science and art within our own observation 
does,) of the ujultiplication of numbers by each succeed- 
ing product ; till finally, the ice in the Polar regions dis- 
appeared, and the buperfluuus thermal activity in the 



168 



THE KELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



Equatorial regions proportionally diminished. Sciences 
on sciences and corresponding Arts on Arts had, work- 
ing with, or according to, nature, developed all her laws, 
and availed Man of the use of all her force, ^^ 

The whole earth was cultivated in a manner far su- 
perior to that in which any portion of it now is. Splen- 
did and joyous palaces, about six miles apart, had displac- 
ed all the isolated abodes of misery and ennui. Chil- 
dren were no longer dreaded as a burden by either parent, 
and were hailed as precious and valuable acquisitions by 
the State ; which not only provided for their perfect de- 
velopment as members of it, but honoured and remuner- 
ated mothers for their bearing and suckling, by an equi- 
valent for the loss of time to which they were thereby 
subjected. This remuneration did not consist in silver 
or gold dollars — the coinage of barbarism — nor in all but 
or quite worthless shin-plasters — the currency of pseudo 
civilization — but in certificates of value based on actual 
production ; or, which amounted to the same thing, in 
stock, by which nearly all property was represented. 

Prostitution, either for life, for a single night, or by 
the job, was of course banished. Volcanoes were silenced, 
tempests were hushed, pestilence and disease had ceased, 
and the earth's circulations were as genial as were those of 
the at length perfectly healthy human body. 

Nearly all labor was done by machinery. The balmy 
air was navigated by gorgeous balloons. No clothing, 
except for ornament, was necessary, and none other was 
worn. The women, released by science, the State, and 
public opinion, from every inconvenience connected with 
maternity, were all more enchantingly beautiful than the 
Houris with which even Asiatic imagination has furnish- 
ed Mahomet's Paradise ; they were very Goddesses ; re- 
velling most voluptuously in the adoration which the 
equally faultless men as voluptuously yielded them. 

All were equally beautiful without being alike ; so 
that the only reason for choosing one rather than another 
was the love of variety. The great problem of the reci- 
procalness of love was solved, by all being so faultless, 



ILLUSTRATIYE. 



169 



both phyfiically and mentally, that love was universally 
reciprocal. Kestraint was banished, virtue was no more, 
and vice was obsolete. 

Throughout preceptible nature, all was perfection ; 
desire was the measure of fulfillment; to will was to 
have. 

Would that I could portray, somewhat in detail, the 
magnificence, the luxury, the bliss, which resulted from 
the full triumph of the Religion and Government of Sci- 
ence. But our now paucity of objects of comparison ' 
prevents me. Give your imaginations the reins, ye who 
are most gifted in that respect ; stick to coherency^ and 
you cannot go amiss ; though the most sanguine will fall 
very far short of the mark. 

The following is the first Lesson of Tlie Gatechisnij 
which I heard the children (actual angels) in a primary 
school reciting : — 

Question, — Wherein consists the value of all exist- 
ence? 

Answer, — In happiness. 

Q. — To what should all human endeavour, therefore, 
aim? 

A, — To the acquisition, perfection, and suflBcient pro- 
longation of happiness. 

Q, — How do you know that happiness is rightfully 
the sole object for which you should strive ? 

A, — I feel it to be so. I cannot desire any thing 
else. Besides, there is nothing else worth aiming at, or 
even living for. 

Q, — Is it right for you to strive to promote only your 
own happiness ? 

^.~It is. 

Q — How do you know it to be right ? 

A, — From the fact that it is impossible for me volun- 
tarily to strive for any thing else. 

Q. — What guarantee have mankind from the first had 
that perfect and satisfactorily lasting happiness as to the 
individual^ and perfect and eternal happiness as to the 
species^ were attainable ? 



170 



THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 



A. — Nature's ; whose highest consciousness, and intel- 
ligence, man is. The seed, the hope, the glimmering fore- 
knowledge, of the great harvest of happiness which we 
are now reaping, nature planted in man when, through 
development, she first rough- created him; and so deep, 
that it never could be uprooted ; but must necessarily 
have come, as it now has, to full maturity ; to complete 
verification ; where, in virtue of nature's law of laws^ it 
must remain; as inexhaustible as the race of man is 
eternal ; as perpetual as the equilibrium of the celestial 
spheroids. 

Q. — During the age of mystery, when man was in 
his primitive imperfection, in his physical and therefore 
intellectual heterogeneity — what name did his bewilder- 
ed imagination give to the object of his existence? 

A, — Eternal happiness. 

Q, — In what consisted his mistake? 

A, — In not comprehending the Social Organism, or 
collective man — The Eternal Being to whom alone, eter- 
nal happiness could be happiness ^ and in not knowing 
that temporal happiness could be made to last long enough 
to be guite sufficient for the temporal beings which, 
through nature's law of individual change, take their 
turns in helping to constitute eternal Humanity. 

Q, — How do you know that our present harvest of 
perfect happiness is inexhaustible ; and that our race is 
fixed in eternal happiness ? 

A, — The laws of the intellectual world follow the rule 
of those of the physical, on which they depend ; and all 
the constituents of Humanity are now adjusted to their 
whole as harmoniously, and therefore as permanently, as 
the ultimate atoms of coarser materiality are adjusted to 
their whole. Man's spontaneous yearning for satisfaction 
has, aided by all nature in the connection, produced in 
the world of man, that necessarily eternal order which 
answers to the eguilihrium which gravitation has, thus 
aided, produced in the planetary world. The happiness 
of collective man is therefore as permanently fixed as is 
the order of the celestial spheroids. 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 171 

Q, — In what relation do you stand towards all man- 
kind? 

A. — All mankind, from the first inseparably, though 
for a long time heterogeneously connected, are now, hap- 
pily, an harmoniously organized whole ; of which I am 
a part, in as strict sympathy with all the other parts, as 
the minutest tissues of ray body are in sympathy with all 
the rest of it. 

Q, — It seems, then, that you cannot do an act which 
will promote your own happiness, without simultaneous' 
ly doing one which micst promote the good of all man- 
kind ; nor can you do an act fraught with evil to others, 
which will not surely redound to your own hurt. Do 
you comprehend all this ? 

A, — As easily as I understand that my whole body 
shares the sensation of dissatisfaction caused by the prick 
of a needle on the end of my little finger, or that of sa- 
tisfaction, caused by the contact of m.j palate with food ; 
or that of delight, caused by my eyes beholding, my 
ears hearing, and my brains understanding, the pleasure 
which all around me experience. 

Q, — But though you are as really^ you are not as 
closely connected with mankind, as the parts of your body 
are with yourself. Besides, the parts of your body hare 
nerves, which instantly inform the whole body of any 
wrong action in any of its parts ; which wrong action is 
therefore, instantly corrected and put a stop to. But 
how are you thus instantly preserved from acting wrong- 
ly, to your own detriment, and that of the great body of 
which you form a part ; And how does that body imme- 
diately bring its all-suflScient power to bear in prevent- 
ing such action ? 

A. — By means of that body's nerves and brain — its 
Scientific Discoverers and Directors. By means of these 
I acquire the aid of the whole force of the body politic 
and of all else in the connection, and am thus enabled 
to shape my actions in accordance with the social organ- 
ism's welfare, and simultaneously with the welfare of 
every part of it, including, necessarily myself My func- 



172 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

tions, like those of the bulk of mankind, are special; 
those of a few, but naturally sufficient number are gen- 
eral. 

Q. — Are you and your compeers, then, but mere blind 
followers of your superiors? 

A. — Blind? no indeed. Our understandings, and par- 
ticularly our feelings, are constantly wide awake to the 
results which acting in accordance with the directions of 
our general functionaries produces. For the rest, we 
have no superiors in any arbitrary sense of the word. 

Q. — But what guarantee have you that your general 
functionaries will not misguide you, or shape your action 
for their own special benefit? 

A, — Tlie same guarantee that my hand has, that my 
nerves and brain will not misdirect it into the fire. 

Here the first Lesson ended ; and music, instrumen- 
tal and vocal, incomparably^ more fairy-like than any I 
had ever yet heard, fell on the charmed ear, and the 
rest of the session was spent in all that could enliven in- 
struction and render it attractive. 

The next Lesson related to how both the special and 
general functionaries, and every member of the social 
compact, spontaneously found his or her true position, and 
to man's connection with all the rest of sensible nature. 
But the attentive reader has already been made well 
acquainted with this, or is to be, further on. 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 



In order to demonstrate the truth of The Religion of 1 
Science, it will not be necessary to enter very minutely 
into details. 

Science has, as yet, excited all but immeasurably 
more curiosity than it has gratified ; there is no single ; 
department of it, not excepting Newton's splendid con- J 
tributions even, which may not prove to be a mere ad- i 
vance; or which can be exhibited to much practical i 
advantage, till all the knowable is harmoniously ad- t 
justed. i 
No just idea of social dynamics — no practical concep- ■ 
tion of human liberty — no coherent view of human hap- i 
piness, could have been entertained before the discovery • 
of the law of gravitation. Even now, the mutual reci- < 
procalness of cause and eflFect, the inseparableness of i 
actor and action, and the inevitability of existence, are 
80 little understood, that people of no mean talents are, ■ 
or pretend to be, considering the question of an uncon- \ 
ditioned, absolutely independent first cause ; and no- ■ 
thing, except, perhaps, the supernaturalistic notion itself, 
is more vague and indeterminate, than is the popular con- 
ception of development, progress, liberty, and happiness. 
So hard it is, owing to education and consequently gov- 
ernment, being still on the supernaturalistic basis, to grasp ! 
the idea that nature, or all which to Man can exist, is ] 
self-existent ; and to conceive of science as a whole ; to i 
unmoor from the long-entertained absolutely statical idea \ 

15 i 



174 THE RELIGION OF SOIENOE. 

that the world was created and is sustained and governed 
by TYiere subjectivity / by an all-foreseeing, absolute, un- 
conditioned mind ; and that therefore, whatever is to 
happen^ is fated so to do ; at least it is in no degree with- 
in the controll of Man. Order and progress are utterly 
incompatible with the chimerical old substructure of all 
things ; as they are, like all science, the logical deduction, 
so to speak, of gravitation. Our political, legal, and 
moral abortions are the legitimate offspring of our super- 
annuated religion. The social system of the nineteenth 
century must be based on nineteenth century revelation, 
ere success can be inaugurated. 

When the granite formations manifested the highest 
progress which had been made on our planet, it was less 
apparent that nature could elaborate the terrestrial flora, 
than, having done so, that she could produce the fauna. 

Between the period of the nucleation of the Solar 
System from the ether which constitutes the lowest con- 
ceivable condition of materiality, and the epoch of our 
granite formation, far longer duration must have inter- 
vened, than between the granite phase of improvement, 
and vegetable manifestation ; and it is demonstrable that 
the same rule held with respect to nature's subsequent 
creations, and must continue to hold with respect to all 
her forthcoming developments. 

The most unscientific, or at least the blindest proposi- 
tion that ever was advanced, therefore, surely is, that the 
present condition of things is substantially immutable; 
that Man is inevitably the shuttle-cock between absolu- 
tism and demagogism ; that nature has expended all her 
creative energy, and revealed all her laws or rather all 
their possible combinations ; that she has ceased to labor, 
except reproductively, just at the point where, 'tis gene- 
rally acknowledged, that she has only produced a state 
of things so inadequate to any end but evil ; so far short 
of what her hiohest consciousness declares ought to be 
produced ; that her performances are generally taken for 
evidences of a " idXV^ from perfection. 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 175 

However long since, according to Geology, rudi- 
mentary Man (for that surely, must be all which the Uni- 
versal Organism has as yet presented) commenced exist- 
ence, it evidently was but a moment in comparison to 
the time which it took nature to produce his prerequisites 
from their most unpromising condition — the universal 
ether. What though no practical improvement of much 
consequence has taken place during tliis moment? Does 
that furnish a shadow of rational suspicion, even, that 
nature is beginning to flag — that she will not go on crea- 
ting, as she has done, till she finishes her undertaking; 
till Man, or the race which he will be transformed into, 
is actually liberated, fulfilled, or perfected, and all else 
in his connection becomes so developed, that demand and 
supply shall be mutuary completive. How caii the re- 
sult of a. process be obtained^ till the process is com- 
pleted ? 

Mr. Darwin has fully shown, in his " Origin of 
Species," that species are not immutable. Of course they 
are not. The present human species are not what Man, 
in due course of nature, is capable of becoming, by the 
difference between the actual and the coherently desira- 
ble ; else, man can really desire the supernatural ; which 
of course must therefore exist, and all is absolute and 
arbitrary, instead of being relative and calculable. 

The languid thermal action in the Polar regions, and 
the consequently (and almost equally destructive) too 
great theriXial activity in the equatorial regions, every 
one must observe, bears a striking analogy to the with- 
drawal of active power from the extremities, or " lower 
orders" of the body politic or Social Organism, and its 
consequent undue accumulation by the " higher circles" 
or richer portions of the human race. 

Similarly analogous, also, are the effects which are 
produced throughout the individual human body, (the 
prototype, as far as it goes^ of the social, and even of the 
universal organism) by disturbing the equilibrium of its 
thermal action. 



176 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

Power IS of two kinds — positive and negative. Power- 
action, like thermal action, is almost as mischievous where 
it is too violent, or positive, as where it is too feeble, or 
Begative. Want, among the lower classes of society, 
must have its corresponding vexation among the higher 
classes, as sure as cold feet and hands indicate inflamma- 
tion, or the constant danger of it, of the parts of the body 
on which life immediately depends. The positive op- 
pressor must be equally, though negativel.y, oppressed ; 
and there are no better terms which nature, glory be to 
her, will ever give to oppression. 

If any one doubts the realit3'' of, or does not fully un- 
derstand what I mean by negative power, let him lean 
too overhearingly against a too feeble wall ; or impose his 
weight on a bridge too weak to resist it ; and see if the 
results are not as analogous as any two things can be, to 
those produced by the actively powerful against {he pas- 
sively powerful ; from the attempts of Man against his 
fellow, to those of the coarsest material nature against 
weak, because unorganized, humanity. 

Yisit the abodes ot squalor, at the Five Points or in 
Water Street, and ask the poor and despised the cause of 
the misery which they are attempting to drown in bad 
rum, worse tobacco, and the din of tambourines and 
squeaking fiddles. The sum of their reply will be— the 
overhearing (positive) power of the opulent 

Visit the up-town palaces, and you will easily discover 
that the misery which the rich and respectable are at- 
tempting to drown in insidious Champaigne, treacherous 
cigars, the soft tones of the piano, and in soire's where, 
such is the constraint and formalism, that in spite of the 
ostentatious gaudiness, ''The heart, mistrustful, asks if 
this be joy," is owing to the passive, or negative power 
of indigence; that to prevent themselves from falling in- 
to the pit of indigence, the opulent have to be per- 
petually subjected to a care and anxiety often so much 
worse than poverty itself, that the costliest stimulants and 
narcotics, and music's softest strains, fail to dissipate their 
misery to the extent that the vilest whiskey and tobacc o, 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 177 

and music to match, dissipate the misery of the poor. La- 
borers, slaves, and even sailors, often whistle and sing 
in the midst of their toil ; and their dancing really is 
such. But who ever caught a banker or "merchant 
prince" at spontaneous whistling or singing? and when- 
ever, which is rarely the case, they attempt dancing, wliat 
funereal motion they make. 

Man is both the necessity for nature's crowning work, 
and the means through which she will finish it. Collec- 
tive man instinctively aims to bear a relation to all na- 
ture in his connection, similar to that which the head of 
the perfect individual that is to be will bear to his body ; 
to be, in %]ioxi^ perfectly free ; that is, really happy. Is 
instinct natural or supernatural? But the head of the 
universal organism is now, only analogous to that of the 
individual foetus in utero. 

The question, therefore, is, how to put Man into a 
condition to favorably and suflBciently influence his vast 
body ; (all which influences him) to constitute him the 
organ by which, aided by lower nature, to produce a due 
equilibriation of thermal and luminous action on the 
Earth, and, simultaneously, its correlative — his own due 
equality, harmony, and perfection. And how this may 
be accomplished, I claim to have fully demonstrated in 
the preceding subdivision of this work. 

In speaking of equality, let me be expressly under- 
stood to mean due equality, as the complete equality 
which demagogism^r^acA^^ would reduce the body pol- 
itic to the condition in which the individual body would 
be without organs ; to the condition in which the universe 
would be, if it was a perfectly equal mass. The social 
system which even professes to attempt to put all on a 
par having no warrant in nature, has of course always 
proved the most miserable of all abortions. 

There is no lack of power, by which to produce Man's 
perfection in the only.sphere in which he can possibly 5^ 
man — in this world ; for since all power for evil, is but 
the abuse of the power for good, what conceivable good 
is there, which lacks the power by which to be produced % 



178 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

Can Man desire happiness more exquisite than misery is 
at present intense? Oh, what a monster fallacy is the as 
sumption that Man cannot, in nature, work out his own 
salvation as man ; that nature is under a curse from 
which she cannot extricate herself. Is she not, to our 
own observation, perfecting herself as fast as she can be 
conceived to do without becoming supernature? 

If man could really, however faintly, conceive the 
immaterial, the supernatural would stand proven ; the 
eflfect of all action would be incalculable; the absolutely 
arbitrary would have sway ; effects would be produced 
without causes, ends without means, or even without mo- 
tives ; and time and space w^ould have no meaning. 

Whatever, throughout entire nature, affects us, is in 
some way in turn, either positively or negatively, affect- 
ed by us. 

If the present physical condition of things makes 
man w^iat he is, man's negativity with respect to the pre- 
sent physical condition ot things is equally the reason 
why their action is thus too positive. Evidently, man 
thus influences all nature, from the equator to the poles, 
and from the center to the surface of the Earth; thence 
through the atmospheric belt with which the Earth is sur- 
rounded ; nay, through the attenuated matter which lies 
between our Planet and the furthest sensible starry, ne- 
bulous, or other matter. But has man's instinctive pro- 
test against the present condition of things no practical 
significancy beyond a vain and tantalizing one? 

Man now influences the universal, or, to him, all, en- 
tirely too negatively. Human action, on coarser materi- 
ality, is now, owing to a want of harmonious unanimity ; 
owing to a lack of life and strength giving organization ; 
altogether too passive- Here is the fountain of evil ; 
and the fountain will never be dried up, till Man, through 
scientific organization, avails himself of the henefit of na- 
ture's force, to the extent of creatip.g himself the Al- 
Tnighty One^ objectively, which he instinctively created 
himself, subjectively ; and reacts on coarser materiality 
as positively, or nearly so, as the latter now acts on him . 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 17^ 

Kot through the gates of death, but through the portals 
of new life — through the new form of law which nature 
is about to develop — will man arrive at the perfect hap- 
piness which he instinctively aims at, and establish him- 
self in a satisfaction, the prototype of which is the equil- 
ibrium to which inanimate matter has attained in its plan- 
etary character. 

It is already in evidence, that even almost wholly un- 
organized human action has positively influenced physi- 
cal nature to the extent of altering climate ; greatly, as 
to healthfulness, and more feebly,, but still quite sen- 
sibly.as to temperature. 

If the influence of mere physical nature on human 
nature was absolutely unmodifiable, it is evident that hu- 
man progress never could have made the first step. But 
inasmuch as that step has been made, and all subse- 
quent ones have been easier and easier, and made at shor- 
ter and shorter intervals, where, short of the perfection 
which desire can coherently measure, can progress 
stop ? 

"External nature may be opposed to the intellectual 
world," says Humbolt, "as if the latter were not com- 
prised within the limits of the former ; or nature may 
he opposed to art, when the latter is defined as a mani- 
festation of the intellectual power of Man ; but these 
contrasts which we find reflected in the most cultivated 
languages, must not lead us to separate the sphere of na- 
ture from that of mind, since such a separation would 
reduce the physical science of the world to a mere ag- 
gregation of impirical spec^'alities. Science does not pre- 
sent itself to man, until mind conquers matter, in striv- 
ing to subject the result of experimental investigation to 
rational combinations. Science is the labor of mind ap- 
plied to nature, but the external world has no real exist- 
ence to us, beyond the image reflected within ourselves 
through the medium of the senses." "The fruits hith- 
erto yielded by direct observation and by the careful 
analysis of phenomena are far frr m having exhausted 
the number of impelling, producing and formative for- 



180 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

ces." '^ The surface and the interior of the Earth, the 
depths of the ocean and the regions of air will still, when 
thousands and thousands of years have passed away, open 
to the scientific observer untrodden paths of discovery." 

Surely all this knowledge is not going to be mere sci- 
entific pastime. Discoveries in steam, electricity, and 
every thing else have, to a certain very significant extent, 
been applied ; and all discoveries combine to form a basis 
for other discoveries, and must do so, till the basis for 
perfect and satisfactorily-lasting happiness, the aim of all 
discoveries, is attained. Nature cannot do less than what, 
through man, her consiousness, she wills to do, confesses, 
as it were, that she ought to do, and can be complete, 
whole nature, only through doing. 

''Each age dreams," continues Humbolt, "that it has 
approximated closely to the culminating point of the re- 
cognition and comprehension of nature. I doubt w^hether 
on serious reflection, such a belief will tend to heighten 
the enjoyment of the present. A more animating con- 
viction, and one more consonant with the great destiny 
of our race, is that the great conquests already achieved 
constitute only a very inconsiderable portion of those to 
which free humanity will attain in future ages by the 
progress of mental activity and general cultivation." 
"What has been already perceived, by no means ex- 
hausts that which is perceptible. If, simply referring to 
the progress of science in modern times, we compare the 
imperfect physical knowledge of Gilbert, Robert Boyle, 
and Rales, with that of the present day, and remember 
that every few years are characterized by an increasing 
rapidity of advance^ we shall be better able to imagine 
the periodical and endless changes which all physical sci- 
ences are destined to undergo. New substances and new 
forces will he discovered?"^ 

Again I ask : — Is the immense amount of knowledge 
which is here iYu\y prophesied, never going to be con- 
nected, and combined into what may be truly termed 
Bcience ? Is it always going to remain so unjointed that 
a few can filch and abuse it ? Is ih^ final end of all sci- 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 



181 



ence mainly to amuse the scientific, and to make the poor 
poorer and the rich richer, up to the point where revolu- 
tion or aggressive war forms the crisis which reduces the 
plethora of wealth, throws science and human progress 
temporarily aback, and kills off the victims of poverty 
till man spares his fellow man from mere exhaustion, and 
the same round is begun again ? 

None of the wiseacres who have worried their brains, 
wore out their pens, and bored their readers on the sub- 
ject of the late war between Austria, and France Italy 
and Sardinia, have even approximated towards its cause; 
a cause, the periodical occurrence of which, the Religion 
of Science, and government in accordance therewith, can 
alone put an end to. Here it is : 

In consequence of the social system (?) which gives 
more and more abundantly to those '^ smart" enough to 
understand the tricks of money -getting and money-keep- 
ing, and which proportionably takes from the others what 
little they have, the latter are forced to turn soldiers,|until 
armies are accumulated which it is impossible to main- 
tain in ])eace, and a system of direct or violent plunder 
and slaughter is instituted under one pretext or another ; 
the true reason never being given, as that would cast too 
much odium on ^' civilized" institutions ; endanj^er their 
stability ; and might, even, tempt mankind to try other 
social systems which might " prove failures." 

Even in the United States, nay, even in the agricul- 
tural portions of it j armies as great in proportion to 
the population, as any in Europe, could be now formed, 
and that, too, by enlistment; as filibustering expeditions, 
and the desperate abandonment of agriculture for all but 
hopeless trade and gold-seeking, clearly prove. 

All changes are but mere modifications ; and however 
strange, difficult, and " impossible" they seem before 
hand, every one, afterwards, wonders why they had not 
been thought of before ; so simple and easy of accom- 
plishment do they appear ; and people will more than 
ever thus wonder, after thermal, luminous, and electri- 
cal action are modijfied to the extent w^hich thev are cap- 



182 



THE EFXIGION OF SCIENCE. 



able of being through combined human action and the 
means which will thus be developed. 

Through combined human action, nature will, through- 
out, take on a form of law as different from, and supe- 
rior to, any thing which now characterizes her, as the 
law of animal life is different from, and superior to, any 
pre-existing law. And to doubt that man will become 
as superior to what he now is, as the present best speci- 
mens of humanity are to the worms which manifest their 
nucleation, is to shut our eyes to nature's whole course of 
procedure hitherto. 

Phenomena are susceptible of modification inversely 
to their simplicity ; still, to assert that even gravitation 
is unalterable — that means will not be unfolded for re- 
ducing theobliquity of the plane of the Earth's axis with 
respect to the plane of the ecliptic, if that shall prove to 
be necessary, would be stupidly bold. Don't throw " im- 
possibility" at m^, ye supernaturalists. Is there any 
thing in all this which even approximates to the impossi- 
bility which is contained in your proposition that Man is 
alive when, judging by the direct evidence of all the 
senses, he is Tcnow to be dead ? 

Ye skeptics, you see what /mean by development aud 
progress. Pray what do you mean by these? Any thing 
out of the vicious ellipse, whose aphelion is monarchy, 
whose perihelion is demagogocracy, and whose whole 
course is either unvarnished wretchedness or gilded 
misery ? 

When the causes of both luminous and thermal ac- 
tion, including those in some way referable to the Sun, 
are, to the full extent of Man's capacity, and therefore 
sufficiently, known, and when, consequently, the thermal 
equilibrium which now exists but a few feet below the 
surface of the Earth is established at the surface and 
throughout the atmosphere, and when luminous action 
shall be sufficient in the Polar regions, and all this, 
through means which man's acting harmoniously, and 
under the auspices of Scientific Sociology will develop, 
the human race will stand amazed at nothinsr so nmch as 



ILLUSTRATIVE. 183 

that things could have so long remained in the condition 
in which they now are. 

" Even now," says Humbolt, " the Earth becomes 
self-luminous, and as a planet, besides the light which it 
receives from the central body, the Sun, it shows itself 
capable in itself of developing light." " The portion of 
this planet (Yenus) which is not illuminated by the Sun, 
often shines by a phosphorescent light of its own. It is 
not improbable that the Moon, Jupiter, and the comets 
shine with an independent light, besides the reflected So- 
lar light, visible through the polariscope." All natural 
phenomena — all the changes to which terrestrial matter 
is subject, are connected with modifications of heat, light, 
and electricity." 

Speaking of magnetism and the electro-dynamic for- 
ces, Humbolt observes — '' As j-et, we can only boast of 
having opened a greater number of paths which may 
possibly lead to an explanation of this subject." 

Ampere was of opinion that " electro-magnetic cur- 
rents exist in the interior of the globe, and that these 
currents are the cause of its temperature. They arise 
from the action of a central metallic nucleus, composed 
of the metals discovered by Sir Humphry Davy, acting 
on the surrounding oxydized layer." 

According to Poison, "in cooling by radiation to the 
medium surrounding the Earth, the parts which were 
first solidified sunk, and by a double descending and as- 
cending current, the great inequality was lessened which 
would have taken place in a solid body cooling from the 
surface." The opposite theory is that the Earth, from an 
intensely heated liquid mass, gradually cooled from the 
surface, leaving all below a comparatively thin crust, 
still in an intensely heated liquid condition ; yet so com- 
pressed that it sustains, except when it volcanically 
rebels, the weight of the cooled crust, the ocean, and the 
atmosphere. 

Again, says Humbolt — " The extraordinary lightness 
of whole nights in the year 1831, during which, small 
print might be read at midnight, in the latitudes of Italy 



184 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

and the north of Germany, is a fact of variance with all 
that we know, according to the most recent and accurate 
researches in the crepuscula theory, and of the height of 
the atmosphere. The phenomena of light depend upon 
conditions still less understood^ and their variability at 
twilight, as well as in the zodiacal light, excite our as- 
tonishment." ^' Who w^ill venture to affirm that we have 
any positive knowledge, in the present day, of that part 
of the atmosphere which is not oxygen, or that thousands 
of gasseous substances affecting our organs may not be 
mixed with the nitrogen, or finally, that we have even 
discovered the whole number of the forces which pervade 
the universe ?" 

Surely, nature's three great phenomena — luminous, 
thermal, and electrical action, together with the odic- 
mao-netic force so ably treated of by Baron Reichenbach, 
the phenomena so absurdly named "Spiritualism." and 
the rapidly increasing speed with which even fractional 
science advances, are giving hints with respect to the ob- 
jective significancy of the subjective God w^iich Man 
created, which must, ere long, commence to be acted 
upon. 

Once more, in this connection, I quote from Humbolt's 
Cosmos — " The electricity of the atmosphere, whether 
considered in the lower or in the upper strata of the 
clouds, in its silent, problematical diurnal course, or in 
the explosion of the lightning and thunder of the tem- 
pest, appears to stand in a manifest relation to all phen- 
omena of the distribution of heat, oi the pressure of the 
atmosphere and its disturbances, of hj'drometeoric exhi- 
bitions, and probably, also of the magnetism of the ex- 
ternal crust of the Earth. It exercises a powerful influ- 
ence on the whole animal and vegetable world ; not 
merely by meteorological processes, as precepitations of 
aqueous vapour, and of the acids and ammoniacal com- 
pounds to which it gives rise, but also directly as an elec- 
tric force acting on the nerves, and promoting the circu- 
lation of the organic juices." 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 185 

The doctrine that the Sun has absolutely and unal- 
terably fixed the Earth with respect to its luminous and 
thermal condition, is of a piece with the old barbarous — 
nay, savage doctrine that all existence is governed by a 
great central, independent, tyrannical and capricious will, 
the immensely magnified likeness of that fancied entity, 
the human mind, soul, or will, which, according to the 
great apostle of a religion which had its excuse in the 
absence of modern science does, or ought to, keep that 
mass of supposed inertia and inconsequence — the hu- 
man body — which he likens to potter's clay, '^ in sub- 
jection." And the monster delusion, that subjectivity 
originated and sustains objectivity — that the mere pro- 
perties of matter are its basis — is the substructure of 
those religious, moral and political vagaries and imprac- 
ticabilities which compose our social abortion, and post- 
pone the solution of the great liberty-problem. 

The stage of religion which was compatible with the 
infancy of the Social Organism is di^ practical a failure 
in the nineteenth century, as would be the attempt to roll 
the ages backwards; and opinionism can no more solve 
the problem of liberty, than subjectivity explains exist- 
ence. 

The light which the Earth now has is, through elec- 
trical action, mainly actualized in the atmosphere and 
proximate ether, and distributed by the former; and 
this electrical agency has been, as all know, to a won- 
derful degree of practicalness, already modified through 
human effort. 

There is not a single obstacle to man's perfection, 
which will not prove to be an indispensable neans of it; 
not an iota of nature's power (" depraved" as she is pro- 
nounced) which needs absolute annihilation ; even old 
fogyism has served a purpose ; it is the ballast of the 
ihip of state, and now merely wants transferring from 
the present rotten craft to the new and superior one which 
is about to supersede it. 

The " heat" of Summer and the '' cold" of Winter 
are bo far from being absolutely dependent on the obli- 

16 



186 THE RELIGION OF SCIENCE. 

quity of the plane of the Earth's axis with respect to 
that of the ecliptic, or on Solar distance and position, 
that there is no year in which there are not many days 
in Winter which are as warm as are many days in Sum- 
mer and vice versa ; and there can be no doubt but that 
that obliquity, should it prove to be unalterable both by 
human and spontaneous means, is only what will be requir- 
ed to produce that circulation which a healthy state of the 
atmosphere will always require. But melting the ice at 
either of the Poles would alter that obliquity; would it 
not? Is that decidedly impossible? Already, the pro- 
duction of light, and of course fire, from water, is under 
the consideration of the most scientific men of the age. 
Ere the perfection which man instinctively sighs after, 
can be shown to be impossible of realization on Earth, 
all means must be developed and combined, and scienti- 
fically organized Man must fail as badly and as repeat- 
edly as has supernaturalistically, rnonarchically; and 
demagogocratically bamboozled Man. 

All the remote and ill understood obstacles to human 
perfection are almost always presented by those who ne- 
ver show the least disposition to remove obstacles over 
which they actually stumble rather than shove them 
aside. 

There is suflScient agricultural-chemical science alrea- 
dy in existence to fertilize the deserts of Arabia ; and 
human force enough thrown away in the shape of pau- 
perism and constrained idleness, to apply that science to 
its art. And if it was as *' constitutional" as is wh( le- 
sale destruction or war, and as " lawful" as is humbug, 
for the nation to organize for productive purposes even, 
those of her paupers who are stigmatized as such, on an 
equitable basis, what, that is desirable, might not even 
that unveil the means of doing ? 

But if matter is — to use a vulgar term, — eternal, why 
has not its utmost capability been yet developed ? Why 
has not perfection been realized long since ? 

I answer : — Inasmuch as we are self-evidently pos- 
sibilities, why were we not sooner realized ? Why has 



DEMONSTRATIVE. 



187 



not everything happened at once ? In short, why have 
not duration, space, means, — all but ends, been annihi- 
lated? 

Is the fact that perfection has not yet been produced, 
a reason why we should not strive for it, any more than 
the fact that we have not done any thing before we Jiave 
done it^ is a reason why we should not try to do any thing 
until after we have done it? 

As to the stability of perfection : — The universal 
ether does not, as Encke and Mackintosh suppose, resist 
planetary motion, but obviates it. It is a part of the 
great " whole," or all which to Man exists, which we 
name the Universe. It is to the celestial spheroids which 
swim in it, what the liquid secretion which lubricates the 
human joints and even the minutest tissues, is to the 
whole body ; otherwise, nature would be a destruction- 
elaborator instead of a perfection-producer ; and Man 
would have been extinguished an "eternity" or two ago. 

Nature seems to say to Man : — " What good could it 
do you to minutely foresee means too remote for present 
use ? Have you not always found that using means has 
developed means? Press forward, then, to perfection. 
Tour will alone, is the measure of your power, and of my 
resources." 



END. 



i 



18Aj.il.-l860 



EERATA. 

Page 11, line 20, for monarchical, read anarchical. 

Page 13, line 32, for news, read views. 

Page 15, line 7, for franchive read franchise. 

Page 16, line 3, for works and crime, read marks and 
avarice. 

Page 29, line 2, for of, read or. 

Page 34, line 7, for mdoe read mode. 

Page 49, line 37, for perfection as, though, read propor- 
tion as, through. 

Page 52, line 3, for simultaneously, read spontaneously. 

Page 61, line 15, for well, read will. 

Page 65, line 9, for the, read they. 

Page 67, line 6, for combine us, read combined as. 

Page 86, line 14, for whice wholh, read which whole. 

Page 91, line 28, for or brigundage, read a brigandage. 

Page ^b^ line 24, for though, read through. 

Page 96, line 29, for Religion, read Essence. 

Page 113, line 19, for anology, read analogy. 

Page 142, line 14, for eat read ate. 

Page 154, line 17, for permented read permeated. 

Page 183, head line, for Illustrative, read Demonstrative. 

Page 184, line 1, for of variance, read at variance. 
Do., line 34, for precepitations, read precipitations. 

The minor typographical errors, those which do not 
alter meaning, are, as the reader will see, too nume- 
rous to mention ; also, the belles lettres scholar will 
perceive that it has been no part of the intention of 
the announcer of the Religion of Science, to trespass 
on his province. 




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